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This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Terry Wildman
Terry speaks in Ojibwe and says, “Hello, my friends, who share this life together with me. My Ojibwe name is (Terry speaks Ojibwe) which translates to “voice of great thunder with a good medicine spirit”. But I’m also known as Terry Wildman, which is a little easier to live up to. It’s good to be here today on this podcast. Just want to say hello to everyone out there.
David Capes
Terry Wildman. Terry, good to see you. Welcome back to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.” It’s great to see you again. You’re looking well, and I have in my hand a very fine-looking “First Nations Version of Psalms and Proverbs.” The subtitle is An Indigenous Bible Translation. Now, you’re from the Ojibwe tribe originally?
Terry Wildman
Yes, that’s my ancestry. It’s actually both Ojibwe and Yaqui. Ojibwe from the Great Lakes region up into Canada, and the Yaqui is from Sonora, Mexico up into Arizona. I have a little bit of both, but what you heard was the Ojibwe language as I was introducing myself. Since I was born and raised in Michigan, I connect a little more on that side of my heritage.
David Capes
Very good. You have been involved now for quite some time in doing Bible translations for indigenous people. One of the things that happened, Terry, as you well know, was that when the Europeans arrived, they began to missionize the local peoples. And part of that missionization was to learn their language and then to try to give them a Bible. And I think the Algonquin language, may be one of the first languages to be translated.
Terry Wildman
I think you’re right. I think the first Bible translation made on “Turtle Island” here in North America was in that in the Algonquin language.
David Capes
They took European ideas and put those into the Algonquin language, and it never really connected. Not in the same way that this translation you’re working on is now connecting.
Terry Wildman
Well, the goal of most of the settlers that were coming here was to get the Native Americans assimilated into the dominant culture. Now that the colonial people had come, the idea would be not to teach our language in the boarding schools. So even though we had Bible translations, we weren’t taught how to read those Bibles. And even though they had Bible translations, they didn’t consider much of the native culture of any value while translating. They wanted to input European style values, which was already found in the westernized versions of our translations.
There was the old saying is, “kill the Indian, but save the man”. They wanted to kill everything Indian in us, and so our language was part of that. I’m glad they translated scripture into our language. It’s better to have some in our language than nothing. But again, the cultural side didn’t come through well. I believe our translation is working on the idea that even though it’s English, it’s a cultural translation that helps our native people connect more using native metaphors. It’s more of a native “worldview,” while staying true to the meaning of the Scripture within a Native American and an indigenous North
American context.
David Capes
In a sense, that project was successful, because there’s not many indigenous people, First Nations, people who can still read their language and understand their language. They almost all use English now.
Terry Wildman
Yes, that’s right. Sadly, our tribes are working on revitalizing our languages, but pretty much, they’ve been lost. For example, I could find very few Hopis who could actually read that Hopi Bible. Sometimes, if they could put the English Bible next to it, they could get it to work and understand it. That’s true across the board, for most of our people. Easily, less than 10% could read their own languages. It’s changing, but some of the depth of the language is being lost, because we have very few elders that still speak them. They’re working to capture all that.
David Capes
Capturing that is going to take time, and yes, probably a lot of resources as well. When did the First Nations version of the New Testament come out? It’s been a couple of years, hasn’t it?
Terry Wildman
Yeah, it was August of 2021.
David Capes
2021. Okay, so it’s been a few years now, and that has done well. I hope it’s capturing a lot of imaginations. I love the translation. I really appreciate it. It’s a dynamic equivalence translation that’s published by InterVarsity Press. But now you have produced the Psalms and Proverbs, which are the heart of the wisdom tradition.
Terry Wildman
Well, Psalms and Proverbs was just released August 5 [2025] from InterVarsity Press, and we had a celebration about that. But yes, the Hebrew Old Testament, was how we began. It was with Psalms and Proverbs. At the time, we weren’t sure if we’d continue, but we are going to. We’ve made the decision to do the whole Old Testament, and InterVarsity Press is happy with that. We’ve signed the contract, so I’ve got a lot of work to do for the next eight or nine years.
David Capes
I started to say that’s about a decade’s worth of work in your life. But think about how significant that is going to be for millions of people who will benefit from that work that you’re doing. But you’re not working on this alone. You’ve got a team,
Terry Wildman
We have an indigenous translation council. We have many indigenous reviewers. We have men, women, elders and young people involved in it. We have a council of about nine native people that go over everything. I do, the initial translation work, and then we have our reviewers and our council give suggestions. We work in Google Docs, and then I respond to those suggestions. And then after we’re done, we turn it over to some Hebrew consultants who go through and check it out to make sure we’re not running off the rails or something like that. They keep us good. And we loved having some of those experts.
Not all of them are native, but some of them are. Some would say, why would you have a non-native working on it with you? I say, that’s part of reconciliation. The native people were in charge. We’re joining with non-native experts that help us in this process, but we take the lead on it, and that’s important for our native people to understand that we’re leading this translation.
David Capes
Yes, and that’s key. It’s a beautiful translation. We’re going to read from it here in just a minute. And along the way, we’re going to hear a little bit of your wife playing the Native flute. She’s a delightful woman. She was here at the Lanier theological library a couple of years back and stood in the stairwell of our Learning Center and played the flute. It just filled that space with beauty and goodness. It was just a good, good day when you guys came by.
All right, so the First Nations version. One of the things I want to talk about is the way that you guys render names. Let’s talk a little bit about that process. I have a friend who has a new ministry, and his ministry is called Asaph’s Table [Tyler and Leslianne Newberry]. It’s a ministry that links together people who are worship leaders.
Asaph was a very important worship leader at the time of King David, and I told my friend about your project, and I told him what the meaning of the name Asaph was. He didn’t know what the meaning. In Psalm 50, there’s a superscription that says, “a sacred song of Gathers the People, Asaph”. So his name Asaph, means “gathers the people.” I love the way that you render all these names. What was the thinking on that?
Terry Wildman
Well, you know, from the beginning, even before I partnered with the translation organization One Book of Canada, and when I was working by myself, before I had a council, I knew this was important. For indigenous people our names traditionally had meaning, and that meaning is important. It helps us define who we are. Now we’re given those names by our relatives, our grandparents and sometimes clan members.
And I knew, as a student of the Bible that in the Hebrew and Greek languages, names also have meaning. Of course, some names are hard to find the meaning of. Some of them have been lost. But for the most part, it’s still there. And so, we dig deep into the Hebrew. I think I remember that in the Old Testament there’s around 2,700 names of people and places. So, it’s going to be a challenge to come up with the meaning of each name and then give it a native feel to that meaning. That’s what we work on doing.
And when I finally had a translation council, everyone agreed that this is the way we want to do it. Because it’s been meaningful. We’ve had native people who weren’t even believers. who read the genealogy of Jesus and began to weep. Because they didn’t realize that Jesus loved his ancestors, just like they do. And that for him, ancestors were important. And so that’s our cultural heritage.
David Capes
Yes, absolutely! That’s your identity. That’s who you are. Your family defines you, in a sense. So here in Psalm 50 we have the subscript, sacred song of “Gathers the People”. And you also put in parentheses right after that, just so we don’t miss it, the name itself, which is from the Hebrew, Asaph. You do that throughout. You do it with the names of God. You do it with the names of places. But I very much appreciate how you maintain that native sense. I think it just elevates the translation in a beautiful way. Let’s read together from Proverbs 8. That’s where I think you wanted to camp out a little bit today.
Terry Wildman
Yes, we can read through it first and then maybe comment on it.
David Capes
We’re in the First Nations Version in the book of Proverbs, chapter 8, which is entitled the Book of Proverbs, as “Wise Sayings,” which is perfect!
