I drove through the Siksika Nation recently and saw the cemetery named after Paul Little Walker. He was a Christian believer whose testimony of coming to faith in Christ showed the power of the gospel to save and transform a life. I wrote about this transformation before in An Indigenous Testimony to Gospel Transformation.
As I saw the cemetary, I was reminded of Paul Little Walker, or Pokopi’ni’s testimony to the gospel. One of the evidences of Little Walker’s conversion was the way that he discarded the sacred objects, and identifiers that connected him to the false worship he had been immersed in before his conversion. Hugh Dempsey, the historian, writes about Little Walker:
And just as Small Eyes–Paul Little Walker– had turned away from his old religion, so did he now reject the objects that went with it. He quit the Horns and the warrior socieities, gave the marten flag to Bishop Pinkham, and turned the thunder arrow, painted staff and the other holy objects over to his wife.
Pretty Nose (Little Walker’s wife) was aghast at the reactions of her husband. She had joined the Horn Society with him and had taken part in many of the ceremonies. She became angry when he started to give things away, but no amount of arguing would change his mind. She reminded him of the power of the holy objects and the misfortune that had come to others who had desecrated them. But he remained steadfast in his devotion to the new religion.
The Amazing Death of Calf Shirt and Other Blackfoot Stories, 229.
Although many calamities fell on the new Christian, Little Walker did not forsake the Christian faith. When his wife died and his painted tepee was hit by lightning, others interpreted these disasters as signs that Little Walker should return to the native spiritualities. But he refused and continued on zealously as a Christian.
Later, as an older man, respected as a churchman, but also for his growth in graciousness (in contrast to his naturally harsh temperament), he showed that his faith in Christ was a true conversion as he persevered to the end. Dempsey wrote:
His chest still bore the scars of the self-torture ritual [i.e. Sun Dance], and the joint of his finger was missing because of his Native religion, but ever since that night in 1898 when his vision had taken him to God, Little Walker had pursued only two goals in life– to be a Christian, and to bring others to his church.
Ibid, 233.
Like any Christian convert, Little Walker was not instantly sanctified but needed to grow and change. His natural pride, combined with his single-mindedness meant that he could lack grace in dealing with others, even as he was passionate about the truth of God’s word in the midst of his people’s need. But God progressively refined Little Walker to hold fast to truth while at the same time, extending grace to sinners.
There is much to learn from the Christian testimonies of Indigenous people, but what is clear is that Christ’s power to save in the gospel is always the same— a miracle.
