Broken nations form a part of the rich tapestry that is our world and the consequences of that brokenness – in conflict, war, poverty and injustice – are among some of the greatest problems facing our world today. One way of understanding that brokenness is to realise how the empires and colonisers of this world have added to that state – or even caused it – through their destruction of indigenous people’s identity. Over the past three weeks I have shared some details from an academic paper on the problems faced by ‘American Indians’ (AI) as they struggle with life in a post-colonisation situation.

Key to healing within the American Indian community has been reconnecting them with their own indigenous identity and culture. The deep connection with land, with culture, and with spirituality forms a part of this identity and when reconnections are made, the paper suggests, health outcomes begin to get much better. It seems then that having a positive image of one’s own identity is not just something that individuals need but that it is also needed for whole communities and nations.

It was this identity that was destroyed by the European imperial powers and colonisers and which left the AIs a broken people. For the return journey to wholeness to be successful, therefore, it has to involve the restoring of this identity.

The key to restoring the identity is to restore the belief that that identity has worth in and of itself. In the act of taking away their land, in the insistence that indigenous culture was bad and ‘un-Christian’, in the wholesale rejection of their spiritual beliefs, this feeling of worthiness was ripped away from them. And once that goes there was actually no need to trash their identity – they would quite willingly do that for themselves.

For decades now there has been some emphasis within the church on restoring wholeness within individuals and many prayer ministry and counselling tools have been used to transform issues of self-esteem and self-worth within individuals. But outside of the reconciliation movement, however, very little has been done for the healing of nations in similar terms. Indeed, I’m not sure whether much of the church has seen the need for this – despite the emphasis on the healing of nations in Revelations. What this paper does is show that the need is very much present.

As Christians we believe that one consequence of being ‘in Christ’ is that our identity as sons and daughters of God becomes a core part of who we are. We should be able to see, therefore, that one of the keys of restoring a broken identity lies within our grasp and that we have a crucial role to play in restoring the nations.