A Brief History of NAIITS

Just over ten years ago, in 1999, the controversial issue of contextualization of Christian mission and theology by and for Native North Americans prompted a small group of Native evangelicals to explore ways to address the issue. The evangelical church had struggled to make sense of the issue – a problem to which many had been both witting and unwitting contributors. Finding little in print that addressed the theological, biblical and missiological issues at had, this small band determined to gather a group of people together to explore and write on the issue of contextualization — of culture and faith.

NAIITS was born in response to the inability of the Christian evangelical church to include Native North Americans in a manner that affirmed who their Creator has shaped them to be. NAIITS personnel believe Native Christians have something to contribute to the Christian community as a whole in terms of mission and theology, but particularly to the Native Christian community.

For many of the participants in the NAIITS ‘community,’ questions of culture and faith have been circulating for ten to fifteen years. Questions surrounding contextualization and the redemption of Native North American culture in mission and ministry are questions they have been asking through many seasons of their lives. And so, most of the questions that have driven the work of NAIITS flow directly from a ‘community’ that has much invested in the answers.

NAIITS emergence is directly tied to the many years of labor invested by its board members in the Native Christian community. From the day of its formation to the present, NAIITS has become a Native North American led organization dedicated to introducing change into the education and practice of evangelical Christian mission and theology. They pressed forward believing that the Christian community had essentially written them (and their culture) out of the story of the church centuries ago during colonization. They did so believing that the post-colonial Christian church had continued to ignore their irrelevance to Native North American people and culture. Desirous of introducing change, they emphasized the inclusion of a First Nations indigenous worldview, especially as it relates to training future First Nations people.

And so it was that, on a frosty December day in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2001, NAIITS hosted its first Missiological Symposium. The conference was convened as a means of responding to three documents in circulation at the time, descrying the use of culture in the exercise of Christian faith. During this symposium, NAIITS supported its position on the necessity for contextualized evangelical mission and theological education in the Native community, as well as its affirmation of the potential of “redemption” of cultures through Christ. The first volume of the NAIITS journal was published as a result.

Since the initial symposium, NAIITS has held five additional symposiums: Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, 2003; Crestmont College, Crestmont, CA, 2004; Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY, 2006; Sioux Falls Seminary, Sioux Falls, SD, 2007, Trinity Western University in June 2009 and the seventh, June 10-12, 2010 will be co-hosted with George Fox university in Newberg, OR. Journals have been produced from each, with the 2009 volume to be published late winter, 2010.

As noted, a majority of the NAIITS board members are connected with local Native North American communities and are in dialogue with global indigenous groups where they are actively listening to the needs of these communities with regard to Christian mission, ministry and theology. In fact, NAIITS members greatly value their commitments to the Native North American community, and prioritize them highly.

In many cases, the active listening NAIITS board members engage in has produced “new and powerful knowledge” which can “lead to social action.” Much of this “new and powerful knowledge” emerges in the academic journals that are published following the NAIITS symposiums.


Concerning the publication of its journal, Terry LeBlanc remembers NAIITS’ history long before the first symposium and journal in 2001. “For many of us the journal, and the organization it speaks for, is just another marker—though a particularly significant one—in a series of events and outcomes which have been dreamt about and hoped for and which are at last coming into being.”

Native scholar Taiaiake Alfred asks,

What is “Indigenizing the academy?” To me, it means that we are working to change universities so that they become places where the values, principles, and modes of organization and behavior of our people are respected in, and hopefully even integrated into, the larger system of structures and processes that make up the university itself.2

From its very creation NAIITS has been asking a similar question, not only within the academic community, but also within the Native and non-Native evangelical community.