Terry Wildman was serving as a pastor at Arizona’s Hopi reservation when he had a revelation: Many Indigenous people could not comprehend the Bible.
So he decided to make it easier for them.
The result is the First Nations Version (FNV) of the New Testament. The New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible, tells the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the beginning of the Christian Church. The First Nations Version describes itself as a “retelling of Creator’s Story” that follows in the tradition of Indigenous storytelling.
Wildman started this work in the early 2000s. Initially, he would rewrite select Bible verses in ways he thought would be more culturally relevant to Indigenous people and easier to understand. When word got out, he was pressed to do the same thing for the entire New Testament.
“I kept resisting it, but people kept saying I should do it,” said Wildman, who is from the Ojibwe and Yaqui First Nations.
In 2012, he finally agreed. Today, the FNV — published by InterVarsity Press in partnership with OneBookCanada — is the result.
“The feedback has been positive,” said Wildman, noting more than 75,000 copies of the FNV have been sold since its release in 2021. “It’s a bestseller for the publisher.”
The First Nations Version is not a Bible version in the traditional sense of the word, Wildman says. For him, it is better thought of as “dynamic equivalence translation” — a process where verses are rendered into words and ideas that make more sense to an audience, in this case, Indigenous people. It is not a word-for-word translation of the first-century Greek in which the New Testament was written.
In terms of tone, Wildman was aiming for how an Indigenous elder tells a story to a younger person.
Among the changes that will jump out to readers familiar with the traditional versions of the Bible is the name used for Jesus. In the FNV, Jesus is referred to as “Creator Sets Free.” God is “Great Spirit” or “Creator.” And a word you will not find in the FNV is “sin.” In its place is the “broken way.”
“We stayed away from the word ‘sin’ due to the way it was used in boarding schools,” Wildman said, referring to how Indigenous youth were taught that it was a sin to speak their own language, to hold Indigenous beliefs, to have long hair, or to hold on to their culture. “It’s still a trigger word for many people,” he said.
Indigenous Christian leaders and scholars have welcomed the FNV, although some have concerns.
Shari Russell, a treaty status Saulteaux (Anishinaabe) from Yellow Quill First Nation in Saskatchewan is an ordained Officer in The Salvation Army and director of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies. Russell appreciates the storytelling approach of the FNV, noting “it can bring new life and vitality to the scriptures, providing new insights that can touch hearts in new ways.”
But she is concerned about the lack of Canadian representation in creating the FNV. “This version was written in the US context,” she said, adding there could have been more Canadian Indigenous people invited to help create something intended for Indigenous people in Canada and the US.
She also wondered about some of the images chosen for the FNV. For example, each of the four New Testament Gospels describe Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, a few days before his crucifixion. The New Testament says crowds threw their cloaks on the road to welcome Jesus. The FNV changes the imagery to buffalo robes.
“That works for some Indigenous people on the prairies, where there were bison, but not necessarily for others on the West Coast or in the eastern part of the country,” she said.
Christopher Hoklotubbe, who teaches religion at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, has concerns about the voice Wildman selected to use — that of an elder speaking to a grandchild.
For some, this resonates, he said. But for others it can sound like a caricature or trope of “the Hollywood Indian,” he said.
But Hoklotubbe, who is a member of the Choctaw Nation, also praised the FNV.
“There’s no reason why Indigenous people can’t also see the Bible through the eyes of their culture,” he said. “It can give them new meaning and insights when they are encouraged to hold close the goodness of their own Indigenous heritage, which we hold was given to us by the Creator . . . as a biblical scholar, I find it refreshing to read.”
The FNV can also be helpful for non-Indigenous people, Hoklotubbe added. It can help them “see the Scriptures in a new way,” while Indigenous people can “see themselves at the centre of the biblical story, not at its margins.”
