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

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 key insights into the utilitarian purpose of creation narratives, primarily challenging the ideological normative worldview that two different cosmogonic narratives are inherently opposed. Instead, highlighting that in fact the narratives are primarily a “community bridge” to intellectually traverse and navigate between the realms of the known and the unknown. Secondly, it showed that cosmogonies naturally evolve as the environment changes. This insight enhanced our understanding of the differences between the priestly and non-P biblical cosmogonies. Although this research was focused on the creation stories of the Haudenosaunee, it became clear that more work is necessary to compare other Indigenous cosmogonies, such as those from the Anishinaabe, Navajo, Cherokee, Nuxalk, among many others, with the biblical narrative. This is an important step on our collective path toward healing from colonial research trauma.

Grantor dc:publisher

Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Mhlanga, Thandazani

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jonker, Louis C.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/136227

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/136227