Sacred Activism vs. Savior Complex: Why Social Justice Needs Indigenous Wisdom
Part 1: Recognizing the Problem
[Note: To my dear progressive friends. I love you! Your sense of justice is so inspiring, but this is something that needs to be said if we are all going to heal and move forward together. Thanks for listening!]
Introduction: When Good Intentions Perpetuate Harm
The environmental activist flying across the country to protest pipelines without consulting the Indigenous communities most affected. The progressive Christian wearing a "Black Lives Matter" t-shirt while attending a church and living in a home built on stolen Indigenous land but never considers Native issues to be important. The nonprofit executive who speaks passionately about "helping" marginalized communities while those communities have no voice in the organizational leadership. And the one that bothers me the most (since I have been fired from admin jobs for making what John Lewis called, "good trouble") the consummate local activist who is afraid to confront the systemic racism going on in their own school or workplace for fear of reprisal.
These scenarios reveal a troubling pattern in contemporary social justice movements: the persistence of colonial mindsets even among those committed to liberation. Despite good intentions, many activists—both religious and not—continue practicing what Indigenous scholars call "settler activism": approaches that center the activist's moral feelings over the affected community's actual needs and leadership.
This mindset can be harmful. When we operate from a White Savior Complex rather than sacred relationship, we perpetuate the very systems of domination we claim to oppose. Real justice requires learning what Indigenous movements have always known: that authentic solidarity transforms the world and us.
The Difference Between Sacred Activism and a Savior Complex
Indigenous-led movements practice what we might call "sacred activism"—organizing rooted in relationship, reciprocity, and reverence for the interconnected web of life. This stands in stark contrast to the White Savior Complex that plagues much progressive organizing, where well-meaning allies assume they know what's best for marginalized communities.
Indigenous communities are good at spotting this type of "help" because they have received this support before. Here are just a few examples of "help from progressive friends" that have had unconscionable devastating impacts.
Missionary Isaac McCoy's 1827 vision for Indian removal exemplified the White Savior Complex, positioning himself as a benevolent protector while advocating for policies that served White colonial interests. His paternalistic belief that Native Americans needed to be relocated away from White society to avoid "degradation" denied Indigenous agency and legitimized dispossession under the guise of salvation. Though framed as reform, McCoy's plan for a western "Indian Territory" with White oversight ultimately facilitated expansion while systematically dismantling Indigenous sovereignty and cultural autonomy. He called it an "Indian Canaan" (The Promise Land!). Andrew Jackson loved his idea and it helped fuel Jackson’s landmark legislation, the Indian Removal Act!
The White Savior Complex played out similarly with both the Women's National Indian Association and Richard Henry Pratt—these so-called reformers positioned themselves as rescuers of Indigenous peoples while systematically working to destroy Native communities. The WNIA, founded by white women who believed they were doing God's work, supported the catastrophic Dawes Act and funded Christian missions designed to eradicate Indigenous spiritual practices. Meanwhile, Pratt founded an era of residential Indian boarding schools with that chilling motto "kill the Indian, save the child." They wrapped cultural genocide in the language of salvation and civilization, denying Indigenous peoples any voice in their own futures.
Ultimately, these paternalistic movements served White interests—facilitating land theft and colonial expansion—while hiding behind the moral authority of Christian charity. Whether the Indian Removal Act, the Relocation Program, the Termination Act or others, politicians, benevolent societies, educators and mission groups convinced themselves that Native Americans needed to be saved from their own cultures, when they were the ones causing destruction. With friends like this who needs enemies?
Empowerment and Agency
Sacred activism begins with the understanding that those most affected by injustice are the experts on their own liberation. It recognizes that we're all part of an interconnected web where healing one part requires healing the whole. Most importantly, it approaches justice work as spiritual practice—an opportunity for the helper to be transformed as much as those helped.
The savior complex treats justice work as a one-way transaction where privileged people "help" the less fortunate others. It assumes that education, resources, or good intentions from outside the community are sufficient to create change. This approach fails to address root causes and often strengthens the very systems it claims to challenge.
Consider how these approaches handle environmental racism. A savior-complex approach might involve well-funded environmental groups launching campaigns against polluting facilities in communities of color—without consulting those communities about their priorities or including them in leadership. The result reinforces paternalistic dynamics while failing to address underlying power structures. What is needed now is not just learning, but re-learning.
Sacred activism follows the leadership of affected communities. It recognizes that residents of polluted neighborhoods are the experts on what they need and how to achieve it. Outside allies provide resources and solidarity while deferring to community leadership on strategy and priorities.
The Banking Model of Mission Work
Drawing from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we see his critique of what he terms the "banking" model of education—where knowledge flows one-way from teacher to student like deposits into an account. The particular area here need not be education but could be social work, political or environmental activism, or others, bet perhaps this is most obvious in the area of mission. Freire argues this approach serves to subjugate entire populations. While educators and missionaries may not deliberately set out to oppress, the very structure of traditional teaching methods can perpetuate domination through seemingly innocent practices and widely accepted beliefs.
In the banking concept of education knowledge is gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable, upon those who they consider knowing nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as process of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students, alienated accept their ignorance as justifying the "teacher's" existence—but they never discover that they educate the teacher . . . The idea is that the narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads students to memorize mechanically, the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers" or "receptacles" to be filled by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.
Throughout my career, I've believed that how we teach matters just as much—probably more—than what we teach. Students pick up on the hidden messages, and those often make a bigger impact than any lesson plan. This built-in assumption, especially by missionaries, is that they know better than the people they're trying to help.
When we take Freire's framework and replace his terms teacher and student with missionary and missionized in the passage that follows, we can better examine the fundamental knowledge-based assumptions that drive most missionary work today.
The [missionary] teaches and the [missionized] are taught;
The [missionary] knows everything, and the [missionized] know nothing;
The [missionary] thinks and the [missionized] are thought about;
The [missionary] talks and the [missionized] listen—meekly;
The [missionary] disciplines and the [missionized] are disciplined;
The [missionary] chooses and enforces his choice and the [missionized] comply;
The [missionary] acts and the [missionized] have the illusion of acting through the action of the [missionary];
The [missionary] chooses the program content, and the [missionized] (who are not consulted) adapt to it;
The [missionary] confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the [missionized];
The [missionary] is the subject of the learning process, while the [missionized] are mere objects.
What Freire's analysis shows us is that teachers—or missionaries in our discussion—become instruments of oppression against their students, no matter how good their hearts might be. Speaking as someone from one of the most heavily missionized groups in America and as a former missionary oppressor, I can state without any doubt that Christian mission work has served as a crushing, destructive force against Indigenous peoples here and across the globe since this country began.
This devastation didn't happen because missionaries were evil people or because they meant harm. The massive destruction caused by Christian missionaries and educators stems from one group believing they were superior to others—thinking they were somehow better and that they alone possessed absolute truth while everyone else was wrong.
How Progressive Christianity Perpetuates Colonial Patterns
Progressive Christian churches often pride themselves on their social justice commitments while unconsciously replicating colonial patterns in their approach to activism. The missionary mindset runs deep, manifesting in subtle but harmful ways:
The Assumption of Expertise: Churches launch ministries to "help" communities without asking those communities what they actually need or want. Food pantries appear in neighborhoods that lack grocery stores because of redlining, treating symptoms while ignoring causes. Mission trips bring suburban volunteers to "serve" urban communities while reinforcing racial and class hierarchies. The problem is not that these well-intended outreaches are bad. It's the binary logic that one can't do both. So, we can both feed people and organize against the systemic oppressions creating the food desert.
Centering Christian Identity: Progressive churches often frame social justice as Christian witness rather than just helping their neighbor in affected communities. This makes the church's reputation more important than justice outcomes and can alienate non-Christian community members.
The Salvation Narrative: Christianity's emphasis on salvation can translate into activism that seeks to "save" others rather than join in mutual liberation. This reinforces hierarchies between saviors and saved, helpers and helped.
Avoiding Difficult Self-Examination: Churches readily identify systemic injustices "out there" while avoiding hard questions about their own complicity. How many progressive churches have returned stolen Indigenous land? How many have reparations programs for Native American or African American communities? How many have examined their own hiring, lending, and investment practices for racial bias?
In Part 2, we'll explore how Indigenous wisdom offers a transformative alternative to the savior complex, examining specific principles for authentic solidarity and how these teachings can reshape our approach to social justice work.
I am a mixed Indigenous writer of books, screenplays, articles. I explore spirituality, theology, Indigeneity, justice, race, farming. Recovering PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Speaking and living into healing our world.
Well said Andy. The whole is what we are all working on together. This week was my attempt to define the problem. next week I'll be posting action steps everyone can do.
Thank you for sharing this…showing a better path