Dewy Bill was ordained by the Indian Shaker Church as a teenager. God has called him to be a Yakama Christian, but White-led churches have asked him to check his Indigenous culture at the door. Bill’s moving testimony tells of his search for a place to belong in God’s family.
Editor’s note: This story contains references to suicide and self-harming behavior. We include this content because it is an integral part of Dewy Bill’s life story. If you are contemplating self-harm or suicide, please reach out to 988 Lifeline.
I was born in Seattle, Washington, while my mother was in rehab. When I was three months old, we moved to the Yakama reservation. Two months after the move, my older sister and I were taken from my mother and my father and placed into a very loving foster-care family. I have multiple brothers and sisters through the foster-care system. To this day, I have a good relationship with my foster mother. My foster dad journeyed on [to the next world] in 2013.
I moved back and forth between my foster home and my maternal uncle’s home from the time I was five months old until I was five years old. My uncle was given visitation rights and eventually received guardianship for my sister and me. But he was battling his own addictions to opioids and alcoholism.
As a young kid, I had a box that our commodity foods [government-issued rations] came in. I cut that up and glued stuff on it. I created a little altar and a little cross. I had all my teddy bears in there, because I knew from a very young age that my calling was to be a minister or a priest, someone who could shepherd God’s people.
When I was about seven years old, we were at the long house, a traditional place of worship for the Yakama people. I joined others dancing on the dirt part of the floor. The dirt floor in the middle of the longhouse is a sacred place that connects us, as Native People, to the land. When we walk and pray on the earth, we are told by our elders that we are shaking hands with the Creator. While I was dancing and singing, giving all the glory to the Creator, a Yakama elder approached my grandmother and said, “He can’t be out there, because he is from the church.”
After I heard what that elder said, I hated her for years, because she made me feel like a foreigner.
My uncle was a member of the Indian Shaker Church. Every Sunday, we went to church — worship services, parties, whatever the church was doing, we were there. Around 2012, my uncle became the assistant minister of the Indian Shaker Church of White Swan, Washington. He was still battling his addiction to opiates. He also gambled. He would take money from the collection plate and would sometimes leave, weeks on end.
My sister and I, along with two of my cousins, depended on one another. We cooked for one another. We basically raised one another. My grandmother, the backbone of our family, lived close by and helped us, too.
Having grown up in the church and knowing what the assistant minister was doing behind the scenes, gave me negative thoughts and emotions about giving to church, because I’ve seen the misuse of offerings.
At age 14, I decided to give my life to Christ. I was in front of an altar, and I felt a warm hug. It was just the most beautiful thing. Being the youngest member of the church, during a transition period between middle school and high school, I prayed for patience, as I experienced trials. I was bullied, cursed and physically hit by other students at school.
One night, when I went home, I was looking to end it all. I remember going up a hill beside my house, falling on my knees and saying, “God, why me? Why this?” I was crying and the sun was setting. The sky changed from blue to purple and pink and red. I felt love surrounding me, and I felt water slowly dropping on my head. It wasn’t cloudy or raining, but I remember feeling bathed from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet with an overwhelming love of God and peace. Through this experience, God gave me the grace to continue though the trials at school that were so hard.
At 16 years old, I was ordained as a deacon of the church. A year later, they ordained me as the evangelist and traveling missionary. I led services and preached God’s word. I went to funerals. I was there any time someone needed anything.
When I joined Mending Wings, a youth program that contextualizes Christian faith in the Yakama culture, I learned that there is more to faith than the Shaker Church. My eyes were opened to broader Christianity — all the denominations, all the theologies that came along with that.
During my time with Mending Wings, I started to embrace my Yakama heritage a little more. I had been fighting with myself internally about my identity. When I was growing up, I felt foreign. I didn’t like the color of my skin. One time in the shower, I tried to rub off my skin with a sponge. I was thinking to myself, “I don’t want to be brown.”
Mending Wings showed me that I didn’t have to choose between culture and religion. I am still on this journey of discovering who I am. I’m an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation. I know that God created me and that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. But the church still has a hold on me. I cannot bring myself to wear my regalia — the ribbon shirts and the moccasins — because I feel like a foreigner in my own traditional clothing. Even though the church is run by Indigenous People, created for us and by us, it still teaches giving up our culture, by saying things like “all that is old has passed away.”
I love my current position, as director of the Mending Wings’ Dancing Our Prayers program, because I don’t want the youth to feel pushed away from either faith in Yeshua (Deliverer and Savior) or from our culture.
In 2022, I started attending a non-denominational church, The Champion Center, and I fell in love with the church and the people. But after six months there, I realized that church would not make room for us, as Native People. They wanted me to leave my culture at the door, like an unwanted coat saying, “Then, you can come in and be one of us.”
Every Sunday morning after that conversation, when I walked into The Champion Center, I felt that I didn’t belong. I felt ashamed. I felt that my culture was something ugly. I asked for a meeting to clear things up with The Champion Center’s leaders. After about a year, they still hadn’t met with me.
In February, I was preparing to teach the Mending Wing’s youth about forgiveness and how Jesus sat down with Peter and Matthew and worked through their issues. They forgave each other. The day before I was set to teach the youth this lesson, God’s Spirit moved within me. “Why are you going to teach about forgiveness, when you can’t forgive the elder in the longhouse who turned you away from your people? And how are you going to teach forgiveness, when you can’t forgive The Champion Center leaders who hurt you?”
That night, I forgave the elder who caused me to feel like an outsider when I was seven years old, and I forgave The Champion Center leaders. I couldn’t talk to the elder, because I didn’t remember who she was, and I didn’t know if she was still alive. But I walked into a longhouse Sunday service for the first time in 15 years. I was welcomed with open arms. My family was there. They asked if I would come every Sunday. I experienced peace and healing in that moment. And I felt loved.
Over the following three weeks, I talked with The Champion Center leaders. I said, “I have been holding onto some things, and they are not pretty. But I want you to know that I forgive you for turning me and my culture away. I’m ashamed that it took me so long to realize this and that I held it in. I’m sorry, and I forgive you.”
They seemed surprised and said, “We didn’t know you were struggling with this. It is water under the bridge.”
“But it happened,” I said. I didn’t allow them to brush it away, as if it were nothing.
This conversation brought healing. It was only possible through God, through my faith, through working out my relationship with my culture and my religion. I realize that God can do whatever God wants to do through me. That’s why I’m here. I’m God’s servant and God’s tool to use.
I’m very hopeful that one day I will put my regalia back on. I look forward to the day when I feel comfortable enough in my own skin to wear it with pride, not shame and hurt, and not feeling like an outsider. I look forward to being one with my people.
