Changing the settler colonial subject: Lutherans among the Bafokeng and Sioux

In many contexts Lutheranism has been deeply entangled with settler colonial efforts to appropriate Indigenous lands for white settlers within an extractivist capitalist economy while seeking to eliminate the Indigenous population. However, there are notable exceptions to this dominant arrangement of Lutheranism and white settler colonialism that involves important Indigenous agency within a settler colonial order. This paper contrasts such different relationships between Lutheran churches, white settler colonialism, and Indigenous populations by describing the situation of the Southern African ELCSA church and the North American ELCA. Specifically, this paper compares the relationship of the ELCSA and the Bafokeng in the North West Province with that of the ELCA and Indigenous peoples in North Dakota, including these churches’ relationships to Indigenous lands and resource extraction.