Land, People, Space, and Place: Constructing a Decolonized Reparative Understanding of the Biblical Creation Myth Through Dialogue Between the Hebrew Bible and Haudenosaunee Creation Stories
type: CreativeWork
description: Cosmogonies are not only ubiquitous, but they also help us understand the worldviews and value systems of different societies. This is especially helpful when interactions between two distinct cultural groups lead to unfavourable outcomes, as was the case between the colonial settlers and the Indigenous community, specifically the Haudenosaunee in North America. The settler community sought to forcefully Euro-Christianize the Indigenous community, asserting that their way of being was superior to that of the Haudenosaunee, primarily because it was rooted in the biblical cosmogony (Gen 1-3), which, too, they considered superior to that of the Haudenosaunee. Thus, the author set out to investigate the settlers’ claims about the biblical creation myths (Gen 1:1-2:4a and Gen 2:4b-3:24) and to construct a decolonized, reparative understanding of the biblical cosmogony through a conversation between it and its Indigenous counterpart. Therefore, using an author-established, genre-specific rubric of land, people, space, and place, the two cosmogonies were examined through the rhetorical critical approach. And all the ways in which the narratives converge and diverge in their assertions on land, people, space, and place were highlighted, revealing that the cosmogonies converge more than they diverge. Moreover, we found that their apparent divergence stemmed from differences in social location or a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the biblical myth. Therefore, after explaining how the divergent themes could be understood in a reparative way, it became evident that the biblical creation stories, although often polemicized against their Indigenous counterparts, are not inherently hostile to the Haudenosaunee creation story. While the settler community claimed biblical narrative superiority and support for their actions, this research showed that the hostility towards Indigenous populations stemmed from sources beyond the biblical narrative. This research also revealed …
abstract: Cosmogonies are not only ubiquitous, but they also help us understand the worldviews and value systems of different societies. This is especially helpful when interactions between two distinct cultural groups lead to unfavourable outcomes, as was the case between the colonial settlers and the Indigenous community, specifically the Haudenosaunee in North America. The settler community sought to forcefully Euro-Christianize the Indigenous community, asserting that their way of being was superior to that of the Haudenosaunee, primarily because it was rooted in the biblical cosmogony (Gen 1-3), which, too, they considered superior to that of the Haudenosaunee. Thus, the author set out to investigate the settlers’ claims about the biblical creation myths (Gen 1:1-2:4a and Gen 2:4b-3:24) and to construct a decolonized, reparative understanding of the biblical cosmogony through a conversation between it and its Indigenous counterpart. Therefore, using an author-established, genre-specific rubric of land, people, space, and place, the two cosmogonies were examined through the rhetorical critical approach. And all the ways in which the narratives converge and diverge in their assertions on land, people, space, and place were highlighted, revealing that the cosmogonies converge more than they diverge. Moreover, we found that their apparent divergence stemmed from differences in social location or a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the biblical myth. Therefore, after explaining how the divergent themes could be understood in a reparative way, it became evident that the biblical creation stories, although often polemicized against their Indigenous counterparts, are not inherently hostile to the Haudenosaunee creation story. While the settler community claimed biblical narrative superiority and support for their actions, this research showed that the hostility towards Indigenous populations stemmed from sources beyond the biblical narrative. This research also revealed …
author: Mhlanga, Thandazani
language: en
date published: 2026-03
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:40:09Z
provider: Stellenbosch University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University