ALASKA
Alaska Dispatch
Alex DeMarban | Mar 08, 2012
Presbyterian leaders who believe old church practices caused decades of cultural harm plan to deliver an unusual face-to-face apology to a Yup’ik village on a Bering Sea island.
This weekend in Gambell, the officials will “seek reconciliation” for past cultural abuses, such as attempting to stamp out the Native language and traditional dancing and drumming as part of a decades-long assimilation campaign that began more than a century ago, said Curtis Karns, a top church official with the Presbytery of the Yukon.
Church efforts prompted villagers who became Christians to speak against their own heritage, said Karns.
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