COLONIAL HYMNS

To learn more, read this brief historical overview of Christianity and Colonialism or read this powerful article about the church’s connection to indigenous ‘boarding schools’ that stole Native children to convert them to Christianity and force them to adopt Western customs.

Once I discovered the misleading history behind “Twas in the Moon of Wintertime”, I knew that I needed to select a new hymn for my Instagram reel. I settled on “Many and Great, O God, are your works”. This hymn text was written by Joseph Renville, a Minnesota businessman whose mother was from the Wahpeton group of the Santee Dakotah tribe. It is unclear where the music emerged from, but the melody is likely of Native origin. During the 1840s, they wrote their own hymnal the Dakota Odowan which offered this community the opportunity to worship in their own language using traditional music. The hymn “Many and Great, O God, are your works” entered mainline Protestant hymnals after 1930 when Philip, a Dakota pastor translated the words into English. I was glad to feature a hymn in my Instagram reel that had stronger and more genuine connections to a particular Native American community.

A few decades after the hymn was written, the group was forcibly relocated to South Dakota after years of conflict and multiple treaties broken by the Minnesota (state) and United States government. Today, 90% of Dakota people live outside their ancestral homelands that became the state of Minnesota.