A Funeral Honoring Native Culture

This excerpt from the issue of Liturgy on “Liturgy in Rural Settings” is from Sharron Riessinger Blezard’s essay on funerals in the rural church.

Most mainline rural North Dakota congregations are not diverse, unless they are on or near a reservation, so it is rare for Native American traditions to be integrated into Scandinavian Lutheran funeral liturgies. Congregational leaders can be open, however, to incorporating Native traditions when the need arises. Not surprisingly, Native views of life and death and funeral practice are quite complementary on both a theological and social level to those of their Scandinavian-descent Lutheran neighbors, as both emphasize the power of community to accompany the family grieving death, food as a tangible sign of support and care, the gathering prior to the funeral for prayer, and the deep spiritual belief. . .   

 When David was approaching death, he wanted to make sure that we would honor his family’s Native American heritage and traditions, requesting that a drum circle be part of the funeral, that he be buried in a plain wooden casket with no vault, and that his buffalo hide be buried with him. He also wanted to make sure that, as he was a U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War, there would be military honors. His wife of more than forty years also wanted the funeral to be held in the local Lutheran church where she was an active member and leader. 

 One of the sons arranged for a drum circle, and the ushers figured out the logistics, opening the accordion doors to the parish hall on the south side of the nave to make room for the drummers and overflow seating. David’s wife and I chose the one Dakota hymn in Evangelical Lutheran Worship,“Many and Great, O God,” for a congregational hymn. The words are particularly appropriate for a funeral, with the second verse ending “Bless us with life that has no end, eternal life with you.” 

 The church was packed with congregants, David’s tribal co-workers, family, and friends. A traditional Dakota star quilt draped the casket, and mourners brought additional quilts. The drum circle moved one of the ushers, a lifelong Lutheran, to tears. “I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he told me. “It’s profound. Beautiful. Holy.” 

 After the committal, David’s body was lowered into the grave in the community cemetery atop a windswept hill on a cold, late-February day. After the military honors, hugs, tears, and words of scripture and hope, one by one the mourners took turns dropping in handfuls of soil—earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All around us were the stone markers where other friends and family members were laid, some adorned with flowers, angels, mementos, and small gifts, connecting lives past with lives present. Death is well-grounded in this place, this community, where the land and sky meet on a thin line, in a thin place between that which is and that which is yet to come. There will be grief and sorrow aplenty, but life will go on until it doesn’t, the trees will bud, the last clumps of soiled snow will melt away, and the farmers will sow the fields yet again.

The full essay is available in Liturgy 32, no. 4 by personal subscription and through many libraries.

Sharron Riessinger Blezard, an assistant to the bishop of the ELCA’s Lower Susquehanna Synod and a published poet, contributed to the Abingdon Creative Preaching Annual (2014–2016), and posts weekly lectionary reflections at www.stewardshipoflife.org.

 

Sharron Riessinger Blezard, “Grounded: Life, Death, and Funeral Liturgy on the Prairie,” Liturgy 32, no. 4 (2017): 25-31.