This transcript of my complete Hyapatia Lee interview also includes her then husband, Bud Lee.
Tell me, were you raised in a Christian household?
No, I was not. I was raised by my grandmother. My parents had me at a young age, so basically my grandmother raised me until I was about 9, when my mother remarried. My stepfather, and mother, lived together for a little while. It was a pretty abusive situation between my stepfather and myself.
I left and lived with my father at the age of 12. My father was the one of the strict Baptist background. Southern baptist upbringing. No shorts for the girls. No dancing.
No movies. No drinking?
Yeah, the whole nine yards. They noticed I was depressed going to church six or seven days a week. Of course, the minister was brought in to determine what is the cause of the depression. You know, I felt like I had some camaraderie built up after a period of time with this particular preacher.
I confided what happened to me with my stepfather, the sexual abuse and things like that, and he said, “Let’s pray for the forgiveness of your sins.”
Your ‘forgiveness’?
Wait a minute! I’m twelve years old here, and you’re telling me ‘my forgiveness’ for ‘my sins’? I think we’re talking about this man who did. . .well, ‘honor thy father and mother’ and ‘don’t question authority’ .
“Does this mean I’m supposed to be beaten to death? Or sexually abused whenever?”
I pretty much left my father within a week of that incident and went to live with my grandmother again. My grandmother had never really spoken to me about the Native American religious beliefs, and so forth.
I confided to her the incidents that occurred with my stepfather, and this particular preacher, and we got into the subject of religion for the first time. She’s full blooded Native American. And, in her family, in her upbringing, the subject of being Indian was pretty much taboo. Since 1914, in the state of Indiana, you could be removed to a reservation if you were of Native American descent. So, they tried to keep it quiet.
My great grandmother even painted her face white and stuff. So, by getting into the philosophies with my grandmother and finding that a lot of it had been buried, for good reason, I was forced to go look up other medicine men and women and study with them.
Your parents were definitely not in tune with their Native American heritage?
No, definitely not. It was something where you tried to assimilate. That is the word! That’s what the government tried to do and it’s been very successful in cases. Where they tried to make everybody to blend in, get with the culture, and go on! It’s been very successful in many ways.
It’s funny, because, with the abuse issue, in particular with the Native American, there are schools that are available that are not of a religious background. However, they are not as good in quality as the ones that are operated by the missionaries, and other religious schools.
You’ll find that on the Navajo reservation, the Sioux reservation, they’ll send their kids to boarding school and they’ll live there and come visit about two, or three, times a year. In these religious schools, they are not allowed to speak their Native language.
This is today! Right now!
Not allowed to speak their native language! If they are, they are punished severely. Not allowed to practice their traditions, apart from the religious practices of the school. They’re sent to their particular religious denominations where they have religious classes they must attend.
To get a good education, they must do this. Not only go through the religious indoctrination, but get separated from their parents and told they simply cannot speak their native tongue. Or study their native religion.
Is there a strong Christian influence on the reservations?
Absolutely! Very definitely! It still goes back to the original days when the missionaries came here to convert everyone. According to the bible. . .Manifest Destiny! The whole idea was this country is Christian, founded by the white people, who must convert everyone into believing Jesus Christ will come back.
If everyone is converted, who is alive, then He will come back, but not until. Also, in the bible where it says man shall have control over the animals? Well, the Indians viewed themselves as with the animals. As part of the animals. They were animals themselves!
When asked, “Do you consider yourself to be an animal?” The answer was, “Yes, we’re just like the animals. Why not?” And they said, “Well, if you’re an animal then we have control over you. . .goodbye!”
Not the right thing to say.
They didn’t know. Nobody gave them the script.
We are joined by Bud Lee, Hyapatia’s manager and husband. What was your religious background?
I was raised in the Disciples of Christ church where I was baptized and went through pastor study classes. I actually toyed with the idea, for many years, of going to seminary. As I grew into my teenage years and adolescence, I realized more and more problems I had with organized religion and their ability to see reality.
One of the things that happened to culminate my disenchantment with the church happened on a Saturday night. A bunch of kids snuck into the church and broke out all the windows in the sanctuary. The next morning, everyone’s going, “How could this happen?”
Me, being the precocious child I was at the age of fifteen, “It’s because you have a world outreach program, and not a community outreach program. You do nothing for the community where you are, and where you live.”
Please, everyone should care about the starving children in Chad, Sudan, and everyplace else, are very important. But you don’t stumble over the child laying on your doorstep to get to the one across the street. Let’s worry about the ones we have to walk on to get over there!
They weren’t doing that. We used to have our Boy Scout meetings in the church, but they discontinued that because they didn’t want people in the church after hours during the week. C’mon! What are we supposed to do?
They’re not giving to the community therefore the community doesn’t care about them. The problem with churches today is they seem to be wrapped up in several different things. Money, evangelism, and hypocrisy. The evangelism and money, I think, causes the hypocrisy to come to life and surface more readily.
As she said, many, many Christians believe the Second Coming of Christ will happen after all the people believe in christ. That’s going to be hard to do when you consider that much of the world’s religions, that are much bigger than Christianity, have nothing to do with Christ.
And churches get wrapped up in big projects, get in debt, and, in order to keep the money coming in, must lie and misrepresent themselves to their congregations.
They have to do that because they’re in business. In business, it’s safe to say, don’t ever ask anyone to operate from their conscious because most people in business are not able to do that. You now have people who, in all good faith, have entered the ministry and, once they got in, discovered they’re ‘in business’.
Things now change. The rules change! Cash flow becomes of the utmost importance. Having meetings and setting goals for collections so they can operate their programs, colleges, and universities to teach people to become more evangelical and go spread the word. Then. . .it starts again! It eats and feeds and eats and feeds. It’s a machine.
They get caught up in that, instead of the real thing, which is ministering to people’s needs
Hyapatia’s autobiography, The Secret Lives of Hyapatia Lee, is now available from amazon.com.
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