Anthony Trujillo

Anthony Trujillo (Okhay Owingeh Pueblo, NM) is a student in the Master of Divinity program at Yale Divinity School who is in the process to become an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He is an active member of the Yale Native American Cultural Center community. His academic interests center on the fraught relationship between indigenous communities in North America and Christian churches, and he is particularly interested in drawing attention to the ways in which churches have participated in programs of indigenous erasure and extermination. His research includes an essay entitled: The Iapi Oaye: A Newspaper, A Mission and the Intrusion of the Word into Native Space, developed in part through YGSNA partnerships with the Newberry Library Consortium for American Indian Stuides. In his investigations of the Iapi Oaye (The Word Carrier), he determined that this newspaper was congruent with Trujillo’s broader academic and professional interests. The Iapi Oaye represents the multi-generational work of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches to missionize the Dakotas. It also exemplifies the alliance between state and religious programs. In addition to being a stand-alone research project, Trujillo intends to present this paper to the Gender and Racial Justice Office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a way of contributing to the church’s pressing work of addressing its legacy of injustice among Native communities.