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Terry Wildman
Terry Wildman speaks his native language, then translates-
Hello, my friends who share this life together with me. I gave you my native name that I received in ceremony. That name is, Terry speaks his native language, then translates- which means Voice of Great Thunder with a Good Medicine Spirit. I was born and raised in Michigan. My ancestry includes Ojibwe from Ontario, Canada, Yaqui from Sonora, Mexico, as well as English, German and Spaniard. I’m married to Darlene Wildman. I have five children, eight grandchildren, three great grandchildren. My wife and I currently live in Maricopa, Arizona, on the traditional lands of the Pima and the Tohono O’Odham people. It feels good to be here, in this place with all of you today. I just also want to say that I am a follower of Creator Sets Free. That’s one of the ways we speak of who Jesus is and what his name means. I’m a native follower of Creator Sets Free, Jesus. It’s good to be here,
David Capes
Terry Wildman, welcome to The Stone Chapel Podcast.
Terry Wildman
It’s good to be here.
David Capes
It’s good to see you and I wasn’t sure what state you were in. It’s a little bit earlier in your time zone than mine. I really appreciate it. We’re going to be talking in just a minute about a translation of the New Testament, called the First Nations Version, which you’ve been spearheading. It’s a wonderful translation, I’ve been able to sit with it. It is a fresh word. It opens up some interpretive possibilities for us as we engage the scripture in a different way, a different language. In your own words, Terry, what’s the big idea behind this translation?
Terry Wildman
Well, the idea behind the translation needs a little bit of explanation. Why English? If our native people, speak other languages, why are we doing this in English? And the answer to that is that the United States tried to consolidate our native people with the participation of the church in the boarding schools. The boarding schools were taking our language from us. While these translations [into native languages] were being made, they weren’t teaching us how to read these translations. We did not have a written language in our cultures. And so, the missionaries, the translators had to make up those languages, basically, and then teach us to read them. But they failed to teach us to read them because the government didn’t want us speaking our languages. The government wanted us to assimilate into the dominant culture, basically, just disappear as natives. And so there was a lot of confusion around that, and a lot of the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing in mission organizations.
David Capes
So this is happening, Terry, not just in the United States, right? It’s happening north of the border.
Terry Wildman
Yes, all in North America, up through Canada and down into Mexico, where the language is Spanish. But the same kind of situations exist there. I was living on the Hopi reservation and trying to find a way to bring Jesus in a culturally relevant way to the native people there. And I noticed that they weren’t really connecting to the NIV Bible that we used. I had run into online, some old Indian prayers, Native American prayers. And I saw on those prayers, they call God, The Great Spirit. They call him Creator. They had Psalm 23, where some native person had reworded it in English, but in a native way.
And that inspired me with this idea that we need to reword in English so that it’s culturally relevant to our native people. And I searched and searched and I couldn’t find a translation like that, that had been done. I just started out rewording the scriptures in small groups, sometimes in the Hopi jail as I’ve sat with men and women. And I would have them at times help me reword it. How would we say this to relate to our native people in a general way, because, you know, [native peoples have] over 250 languages and, we have hundreds and hundreds of tribes. And we don’t have exactly the same belief system all across our native tribes. But because of colonialism our people are now speaking English. We’ve actually have more of what some may call a pan-Indian culture now. We have it through the pow wows and through speaking and writing and books that have been written and translated from our tongue. So that was the idea behind the beginning of this project, which eventually led to actually doing a translation because we couldn’t find one that was done. And I just kept thinking, well, there’s got to be someone out there I can inspire to do this, right?
David Capes
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Somebody else. It’s always, you know, somebody, somebody’s going to do that. But in fact, it ends up being you who does this.
Terry Wildman
It did. And it was confirmed to me through prayer, and through a number of groups and people as they read the samples of what I was starting to do in the rewording, which eventually led to actual translation. You don’t really have to recreate the wheel. We have 40-50 English translations that we can reference and get ideas from. But we went beyond that. Once this became a translation, that was around 2012, I committed myself to this not knowing. Kind of like Abraham, I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is God’s taking me somewhere. And I’m not really trained to be a translator. But I know how to use the tools. I have Logos Bible Software. I know how to use the basic tools. I took Hebrew, 101 and Greek 101. And so I kind of knew what not to do. I knew I needed help. And that’s where we had the Bible translation organization, One Book of Canada, find out what we were doing by accidentally finding my website about this online.
David Capes
Accidentally! Maybe providentially, providentially found.
Terry Wildman
Yes, we’ll say providentially found. So One Book of Canada, saw what we were doing and said, Well, how would you like a Bible translation organization to come behind you, and to empower you to do this translation and give you more credibility. That’s what I had been praying for. And they provided that for us, which is really wonderful. And their philosophy is with indigenous cultures, they don’t do the translating. They just empower the indigenous people to do it and give them tools and an expertise and things like that. But the final decision, and the ownership of the final result of the translation belongs to the indigenous people who actually do the work.
David Capes
We’re talking with Terry Wildman about the First Nations Version. It’s an indigenous translation of the New Testament. And it’s really marvelous.
So, while you were working on this, what was your title? As you were pulling all this together? Do you have a title like Executive Editor or something like that?
Terry Wildman
Oh, my personal title developed into the Project Manager, Lead Translator for the First Nations Version Project. We call it a project because we knew it was going to be more than the New Testament.
David Capes
So, you have envisioned doing other parts of the Bible?
Terry Wildman
Yes, as matter of fact, we just finished Psalms and Proverbs. That’s been turned over to InterVarsity Press and within a year, it should be published and released to the public as part of this project, the First Nations Version.
David Capes
You were talking earlier about your name and about the significance of names. What I’d like to do is get you to read a little bit of it. Matthew 1:1, because there’s a lot of names in there. There’s a lot of really interesting names, all throughout. And you choose to do it in a very meaningful way. I think you take the meaning of the Hebrew word behind it, and then you give that as kind of a name. Is that a way of describing it?
Terry Wildman
That’s a good way to say it. One of the things is, in the Hebrew culture names had meaning. Even names of places and people had meaning. And sometimes the meaning of their names, lends insight into the story that’s being told. Even Jesus’ name, it says he was given a name, to show what he was going to do. He was going to set his people free. He was going to release them from their sins, their broken ways. And Abraham was given a name, father of many nations, that led into what his purpose was, what his calling was from the Creator. And this is true of our native people. Our names all traditionally have meaning and some of that meaning has to do with a clan name or a tribal name. Actually, what clan you were born into might influence how you were named, and what your role would be. And your name could be given as a leadership name, things like that. We saw this as common ground.
