Canaanites Cowboys And Indians Analysis

In “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians”, Robert Warrior primarily explains the biblical story of the Exodus and how it should not be used as a liberating text in general, but especially why it is inappropriate in the case of the Native Americans. Warriors starts off by saying that Christians try to fight for the rights of Native Americans and that because of the church’s prosperous financial, political, and institutional resources, this help is much needed. Nevertheless, Warrior then explains that the inclusion of Native Americans in Christian political praxis is difficult mainly because Christians have a different way of going about the struggle for justice than most Native Americans, and they refuse the idea that Indians might know best how
In fact, in both cases, we see a group of people, that used to be oppressed in the place they come from, emigrating to another land and subordinating the indigenous people. In the case of the Exodus, the emigrating people are the Israelites, and the oppressed of the oppressed are the Canaanites. In the American history, the emigrating people are the all the ones who left their countries in search of religious freedom, economic prosperity, etc., while the oppressed of the oppressed are the Native Americans. What Warrior explains is very clear and I completely agree with everything he states. As soon as I read it, the first thing that came to my mind was Delores Williams’s critique of James Cone’s reading of the bible. Williams basically makes the same arguments as Warrior, explaining that the Exodus should not be used as a liberating text because even though God frees the Jews from oppression, He ultimately oppresses the indigenous people of the Canaan. While Williams compares black women to the Canaanites, Warriors compares Native Americans to them. In the last sentence of the article, Warrior states, “Maybe, for once, we will just have to listen to ourselves, leaving the gods of this content’s real strangers to do battle among themselves.” I am not sure I am interpreting this right, but I think the author is saying that religions often provide grounds for people to oppress others. For this reason, we may “look elsewhere for our vision of justice, peace, and political sanity.” In other words, since throughout the course of history deities have been used to subordinate people, maybe it’s time to start using other sources to make justice emerge in the world. It seems a very strong statement from the standpoint of a theologian, but I might have misinterpreted