Arapaho Tribes Seek Removal of Church Over Sundance Remarks

A dispute over religious practice has settled into a weekly standoff on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, where the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes have declared a Christian church and its pastor unwelcome after she condemned their most sacred ceremony.

The conflict traces back to a sermon delivered on July 5 by Sarah Lucas, pastor of Foundations for Nations Church, in which she described the Native American pipe as idol worship. Video of the service circulated widely in July, just as Arapaho people were emerging from their week-long Sundance ceremony.

Lucas has said she regrets the sharpness of her delivery but not the message, which she describes as her interpretation of the Bible. She argues her words are constitutionally protected and that she has spent nine years urging Native congregants to renounce the Sundance, sweat lodges and the burning of cedar during prayer, practices she equates with idolatry.

"It's not Jesus plus, it was Jesus only and it costed him his life," she said, citing the Ten Commandments' prohibitions on idol worship.

For many Arapaho, the sermon struck at the core of their identity. The Sundance, a cornerstone of Arapaho spiritual life, is a time of connection, offering and collective renewal. Tribal leaders say Lucas also disclosed closely held details of the ceremony that are not meant to be discussed publicly.

"What she said was the most insulting thing she could say about our tribe because that's our highest ceremony," said Keenan Groesbeck, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Tribe.

Big Wind Carpenter, a community organizer, said the ceremony's importance cannot be conveyed to outsiders. "This is our oldest ceremony, and if anyone is speaking and disrespecting our oldest ceremony, we will not tolerate that," he said.

Protesters have marched near the church in the weeks since, at times joined by activists from the American Indian Movement. Some carried signs reading, "Our Culture Is Living, Our Ceremonies Are Sacred, Our Children Are Our Future, Our Sovereignty Is Our Right." Demonstrators on horseback and singing have also been part of the gatherings.

Lance Fourstar of the Montana American Indian Movement said the pastor should leave, arguing her words had reopened generations of trauma. "These wounds that we're barely able to heal from," he said.

Lucas, who owns the land beneath her church, has said she will not go. She deliberately built on private property within the reservation's boundaries rather than on tribal land, where she said the tribes would effectively be her landlords. The church sits amid a patchwork of federal, tribal and private property, a legacy of 19th-century policies aimed at breaking up collective tribal land bases.

She said her congregation, which is mixed Native and white, has seen Sunday attendance fall by half from about 150, and that some members were unaware of her stance. Some weeks, she said, the protest crowd has rivaled church attendance.

"We stand on our faith," Lucas said. "If God said to go and kick the dust off our feet, we would go. We have no problem leaving this behind because it wasn't our doing."

The standoff tests the boundaries of religious freedom and the right of a tribal nation to govern according to its own values and protocols. Some Arapaho associate Lucas's rhetoric with the assimilationist boarding school era, a history that Episcopalian and Catholic missions active on Wind River since the late 1800s have sought to address by embracing elements of Shoshone and Arapaho ceremony.

Jessica Shoemaker, a professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, has weighed in on the legal questions surrounding the dispute.