Maureen Brown's Bio
Shining Woman
Co-founder of Northern Connections Inc.
NEW! Maureen
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television program on Abortion
My
name is Maureen Brown, my spirit name is
Shining Woman
I am Ininnew (Cree) from Opaskwayak Cree Nation. I
grew up in Northern Manitoba directly across from the town of The Pas. I
left home in 1983, and in 2000 I moved back. When I left home in 1983 I
vowed I would never return home and most importantly return to my people.
The daily encounter with racism had more than taken its toll. I now
recognize the Creator’s providence regarding this area of my life. It was
in this arena of testing that propelled me into leaving my community and
into the lessons that awaited me.
My formative years were shaped by the ideology that my people, the First Nation people were inferior and that the white race was superior, I personally felt the effects. The internalized shame I carried during this period became the catalyst that would shape my young life. Years later I married a wonderful Christian man, Don Brown. His prodding of my heritage was met by ambivalence, I made no apologies because I had walked not only walked away from my community but away from my people. There were no intentions of ever embracing who the Creator created me to be. Our married and home life was marked by an unending desire to walk closely with the God (having experienced our own separate discovery of our purpose here on earth). Our home was a place of quiet reverence and retreat from the outside world. During that time we were inspired by Keith Green, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6hOyx8LF4I and the ministry he had planted prior to his untimely death. His life inspired us to surrender everything. We took that surrender to a level that found us selling all that we owned and embarking on a journey to Israel, where we had planned to visit for an extended period of time, starting with the Feast of Tabernacles. Before Israel we planned on traveling through Europe for 3 months with our two boys, Josh and Cody, visiting YWAM bases and Dr. Shaeffer’s Labri in England.
Eventually, we found ourselves on the beaches of Normandy. My father is a WW2 Veteran who landed on Juno Beach on June 6, 1944. As I scanned the vast beach, my thoughts were immediately fixed on my dad and all the other First Nation men that landed there, all very far from home. Their history was my history. A powerful anointing came over me and I began to weep. For the first time in my life it was as if the heavens opened and I stepped into my destiny as young Cree woman. Up until that point I had wanted to erase my history, not even study it, believing it had nothing worth investigating. I wept and a deep sorrow and desire to be with my people welled up inside me, it was a tangible spirit of the “now,” in that split second my whole existence as a First Nation woman embodied me. It was as if until that point all roads led me to that space and time.
I looked over at my husband and told him, “I want to go home.” From that moment, I was overwhelmed with an insatiable desire to learn. When we arrived home, I began to reach out of myself to explore and learn about my people. I learned that the things I had been taught and “caught” about my people were erroneous and came from a place of ignorance. I have since learned that our people’s teachings are what is needed in this time in the history of mankind. These findings gave me a better understanding of the tremendous opposition to our ways and our beliefs and how it clashes with the current world system.
My time as a young teenager was marked by hours of Pow Wow dancing, being acutely aware that my dancing was a form of worship to the Creator. The sound of the drum acted as an instrument that stirred my spirit to total abandon. When I became a Christian I was told that these cultural things were not of God. I believed it. Although there was a part of me that questioned it, especially knowing and realizing that the Creator I worshiped as a young pow wow dancer had a name, Jesus. It was about this time that I came across the book, “Bruchko” about a young man who went into the jungles of the Amazon to share the Good news of Reconciliation. He shares his story in such a way that challenges my view and all that I had been taught in church. I was willing to listen and it was the first time that I stepped out in “faith” in a way that pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone. His experience of accepting a people exactly how they were and how they worshiped was something I needed to hear. My worldview in the Christian world was that of being boxed in to some person’s ideology although I did not know it at the time. Bruce Olson’s testimony challenged me to the core and equipped me to have faith. What is faith if of who God is and how He works.
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