Work 11

The greatest difficulty with our boys is to overcome their innate aversion to work. You have to know that they are the children of born beggars.

Quote: Jasmin Lörchner (23.11.2016): Wie die Sioux katholisch wurden. In: Spiegel Online. The year (1900) is an approximation. Picture: Wikimedia

Anonymous priest who evangelised among the Lakota Sioux in North America about his pupils.

Lakota spirituality was fundamentally different from Christianity. They believed that they only thrived thanks to nature’s benevolence and did not consider humans to be the pinnacle of creation. Sitting Bull and many others protested against the confinement of the Sioux (to which the Lakota belong) in reservations, and against living conditions in them. The Sioux also rejected attempts to forcibly assimilate them, as well as Christianity - missionary work was brutal and involved in the colonial subjugation and exploitation of Native Americans.

*MariJo Moore (2003): Genocide of the Mind. New Native American Writing. New York: Nation Books.

1900