Corporate responsibility

In a slightly uncommon use of the word today, I've been thinking about corporate responsibility on and off today. I'm thinking more in the sense of group responsibility or ancestral responsibility though corporate responsibility has tones of old church lingo that makes me feel a bit more at home with it.

in particular I was looking at a photo of rather deserted looking Native American tepees and considering some of the flashback scenes from The Last samurai that I watched recently. There is no question that some of my ancestors or at least the countrymen of my ancestors dealt unjustly and wrongly with Native Americans. Whether you consider the history of North American missions that attempted to "civilize" them, the peace treaties that were continually broken or the massacres of women and children in the settlers' move westward there's not much question of this.

So now, here I am. I see that the life of many Native Americans on reservations are terrible. For a variety of reasons the rates of alcoholism, poverty and social dependency are off the scales in their sovereign lands. I tutored at a Native American center in the city of Chicago for about a year while in school and this stirs up some of the same mixed feelings. I want them to see Christ deeply and still do that in a way that doesn't shred their ethnicity, one that seems intricately interwoven with a mystic faith.

In high school I wrote a short story in which a white man was to share his faith with a Native American. In it I had the white man agree with the Native American on the importance of valuing the land and linked the concept of The Great Spirit with God in haphazard school-boy fashion. This doesn't seem to be the best answer, but I do see touches of God's truth sprinkled in the beliefs of others long muted and warped by ancestral practices since the days of Noah.

I won't figure this out in one sitting but getting back to the main point, do I have a particular share of corporate responsibility to these people because of my ancestors? Or do I have a share of corporate responsibility to African American's who's ancestors were slaves? As I'm from Pennsylvania, there is a possibility my ancestors never owned slaves and consistently fought against it but I hardly know.

The Cranberries in their song Zombie sing of the ongoing dispute between the factions of their homeland Ireland. I hardly know if there is some comparison but the lead singer cries passionately that "It's not me. It's not my family in your head they are fighting." telling the zombies who perpetuate this fight that neither she nor her family want a part in this conflict. They didn't state this or kill anyone. This is corporate responsibility for crimes taken to a new level. The sins of some in 1917 are carried on to people who carry the same flag or are behind the same cause and the cycle rolls through the generations.

What can stop these cycles of violence or lesser cycles of dependency and distrust? That's the bigger question that's haunting me today. Perhaps the Sunday School answers that all kids give when they don't know the answer is the correct one this time "Jesus."