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Around the world, television viewers watched Native Americans welcome the Olympic athletes to the 2002 Winter Olympics with traditional singing, ceremony, and dance. There was another Native group that you didn't see on TV. The "Dancing Our Prayers" evangelism team was the only native Christian dance troupe among performers at the Salt Lake City games.
As cultures joined and athletes put their best foot forward, the twelve dancers and musicians had come as a special kind of team, reaching out with the Gospel message.
"This is a new kind of ministry that utilizes Native American dance and song as a way of communicating the Good News," said Daniel LaPlante, a pastor on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation who leads the dance group. "It's a fresh way of reaching unbelievers with the Gospel."
Some of the dancers had been to other countries around the world as a "Dancing Our Prayers" ministry with Wiconi, International. For others, like Cody American Horse, it was a new experience to perform her fancy grass dance with a Native Christian group.
In downtown Salt Lake City, they performed at the More Than Gold Command Center, and at the Navajo exhibit in Gateway Plaza. A Swedish camera crew took the scene and an interview back to northern Europe. An Evangelical Free Church in Park City, Utah, and the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Sandy, Utah had also invited the team to share in worship.
The Dancing Our Prayers team are Christians who feel the calling to honor the Lord in a way that is natural and truthful for them. It is worship, and it is outreach.
Traditionally, to native people, dancing is a form of communication, troupe members explain to people from other cultures. "It's how native people express themselves."
Dance in the traditional way is also an expression of prayer and thanksgiving, La Plante tells those at performances who ask. "We havea belief in Christ, so basically we are native Christians who are just using traditional expression to tell people about our faith."
"We dance our prayers," he summed up. "Christians are praying people, and what better outlet than the dance?"
LaPlante says he sees dance evangelism "breaking down barriers and stereotypes."
"When we were in Salt Lake City, we were performing right next to the Salvation Army and there were some homeless people there, and there were some native men who came in to watch us. For the first time, they saw people talking about Jesus who were wearing regalia and singing songs with the drum. We had an intertribal dance and they joined in."
It seemed that the dance brought something of God's grace to these men, the troupe leader saw. "There's a lot of bitterness out there among native people, traditional thinkers, because of the past history. Any kind of comfort and peace you can bring to people is welcomed. I think that our witness for the Lord and using the dance and regalia just helped those Indian men understand God's love for them more clearly."
Dancing to Honor the Lord For His Healing
Cody American Horse gave a powerful testimony to the Lutheran church congregation. She was healed of cancer, and now she dances to honor the Lord.
When doctors gave four weeks before she would be confined to a wheelchair, the family had called its members together to pray. The Lord healed Cody.
"I have always danced to honor the Lord for him healing me," she said. "I had cancer, and today when I dance, I dance for the people and I pray for the people, because if God can heal me, he can heal anybody."
The experience in Utah was the first time that this woman in her mid-thirties had danced with a Christian group in what is being called "contextualized" worship, or worship from within the context of her own cultural style of dance and music.
"I didn't know this existed," she said.
"For her to see that there are other Native dancers who dance to honor the Lord was an eye-opening experience for her, because on this reservation, the Christians for the most part criticize pow-wows and rodeo," LaPlante said.
"Her father ropes in the rodeo, so whenever they went to church, the people would start condemning pow-wows and rodeos, and here she is dancing to honor God and she's being condemned by Christians. So they just stopped going to church, because they couldnt' put up with all the criticism."
For Cody American Horse, the heavenly hosts accompanied the church performance. Contemporary Christian musician and songwriter Michael Jacobs of Rapid City, a Cherokee, had joined the troupe on the Salt Lake City trip. During one of his songs, the dancer heard angels singing.
"She told me she thought there was a backup choir," said LaPlante. "She looked around and there was nobody. She thought maybe people were singing in the back. But she couldn't see anybody, and she was just amazed that she could hear angels singing along to his music. It was just an awesome time of worship."
The troupe goes where they are invited. These are Native people who say they feel a wind of change blowing.
Wiconi International President Richard Twiss, a Lakota, gave this introduction to a multi-cultural Christian gathering at the recent Many Nations, One Voice conference at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas:
"All over the world there is an emergence taking place among the indigenous or host people of the land. The tribal people are beginning to emerge into their God-given place of both authority and service, or giving in the body of Christ. You're going to see Native people using their culture - their music and their dance - in a way that is both pleasing to God and fully rooted in Biblical faith. This is a freedom and a liberty that God is bringing into the Church."
Worship leader and recording artist Jonathan Maracle, a Mohawk from the Tyendinaga Territory in Ontario, added that culture does not take precedence over worship. "Our culture is something that we can honor and respect, but use as a wonderful vehicle to carry the message of the love of Jesus Christ."
Taking Their Dance and Song To the Nations
The Dancing Our Prayers team is following the Great Commission and taking its ministry to the nations.
The reception that the ministry is receiving in other nations is one reason that Richard Twiss believes "there is no other people so uniquely prepared for world evangelism as First Nations people are today."
Respect for American Indians worldwide has opened doors to China, Tibet, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Israel. This year, Wiconi, International teams are traveling to Pakistan, Peru, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Russia.
"There are people who want to meet God and they love Indians," LaPlante told a workshop of listeners in Dallas.
"I can sing these songs that praise God and I do it for the Lord and I've seen souls won to the Kingdom because of being who we are," he said.
He wore the numbers 316 on his regalia in China and Switzerland as "a witness of our faith." It is a reference to the John 3:16 passage, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (NIV)
La Plante received the Lord on March 9, 1990 at age 29, when what he calls a "miraculous conversion" delivered him from drinking and drugs. He was living in Guam at the time, and doing construction work on a Church of the Nazarene building.
"It was a Friday, and we were partying after work as usual. I was in the shower trying to get cleaned up, because I didn't want to smell like a drunk when my wife got home," he recounts. "The Lord came to me in the shower-the feeling was tingles from head to toe. I looked up and said, `Is that you, Lord?' And the voice said, `Today's the day of salvation'."
He went to the church to see the preacher. "He ended up leading me to the Lord and delivering me from some kind of spirit that was in me. I don't know what it was, but it came out of me, and I felt it come out. I was instantly delivered from alcohol and drugs."
After preaching with Prison Fellowship International and becoming an associate pastor at the church were he was saved, LaPlante graduated from bible college and now pastors the Lakota Chapel in Eagle Butte, S.D., with his wife, Cyndi.
He had begun dancing in the second grade, winning many contests and later was part of a performance at the Kennedy Center for President Ford.
It wasn't until he got to Bible college that he learned that some conservative people consider native dance and drums to be evil.
"I would say, `well, show me in Scripture'," he said.
The missionaries had "condemned anything native as evil," LaPlante said, and their families have since become accustomed to Christian worship with only Western hymnology and Western cultural values. But those who have seen redemption of their own drums and dance forms to glorify God say it has given them a new peace.
In Kansas City at the first Many Nations, One Voice conference, LaPlante asked the Lord for confirmation of what felt like a right and truthful expression of worship.
"I was saying to the Lord, `Is this you?' Because I don't want to do anything that's not you, so I need a sign," LaPlante related. "I looked at the drum. And you know what I saw? A cross."
Apparently the cow whose hide had formed the drum had been branded with a circle with an X in it, and when the hide stretched over the drum frame,it formed a perfect cross. The realization filled LaPlante with "indescribable joy;" the same joy as when he had met the Lord.
"God said, `It's okay'."
For a time thereafter, "I would pray on every trip, `Lord, if this is not you, stop this trip'," he said, "and God would open doors."
One woman prophesied that he would go to China with the dance ministry team, and that God would provide all the money he needed to get there.
One of the comments that he heard from the Chinese people was that, "They have come and they shared with us what is truth."
To find out more information on the Dancing Our Prayers ministry teams, contact Wiconi International at 360-546-3787, or www.wiconi.com.
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