Joint Statement –
As Indigenous Anglican leaders from across the Anglican Communion, we have followed the journey of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland (ECN) towards self-determination with prayer, aroha, and thanksgiving. We walk with our Diné family not as distant observers, but as relatives. We are bound by faith, by kinship, by a shared history of colonisation, and by a common hope for the flourishing of Indigenous peoples within the life of the Church.
We have stood in solidarity and rejoiced with the Church in Navajoland at every step of this recent journey. We bore international witness when they were elevated to the status of a Missionary Diocese at General Convention in 2025. We rejoiced with them at the adoption of their new Constitution, written in both Diné and English, and at their readiness to lead and govern themselves. We hold in deep regard and affection the leadership and ministries of the Diné elders, the ECN Standing Committee, and the local ministers and pastors who carry the daily life of the Church between the four sacred mountains.
We give thanks for the outstanding servanthood of Bishop Barry Beisner, whose faithful ministry as Bishop Provisional, concluded on 21 June 2026, and for the Bishops before him who helped shepherd the Church in Navajoland to the threshold of an historic electoral college. We uphold the ECN Standing Committee as it now serves as the Ecclesiastical Authority of the Diocese, and we have every confidence in its wisdom and strength for this season.
We share the surprise and disappointment expressed by many at the postponement, for a second time, of the election of Navajoland’s first Bishop Diocesan. We know this must have been a deeply sacrificial and difficult decision. We honour especially the discernment of the Rev. Leon Sampson and the Rev. Canon Cornelia Eaton who, in a remarkable spirit of servanthood, have set aside their own hopes for a season and returned to strengthen the Standing Committee in its work. Both remain nominees, and this is a postponement of the process, not a cancellation. We will continue to uphold them, and this crucial and historic process, in our prayers.
We have received the Standing Committee’s recent statement, and we welcome the stated commitment of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and the leadership of The Episcopal Church to work with ECN on a covenant of action addressing the structural, financial, and long-term mission needs of the Diocese, to be brought before General Convention. We receive this commitment in good faith and with hope, and we look forward to a covenant that is equitable, honest, and worthy of the Diné church. We note that a new election date is to be determined by 31 August 2026, for an election to be held on or before 30 May 2027, and we will hold this timeline, and all who share responsibility for it, in our prayers.
We understand that the broader Episcopal Church will want assurance that the Diocese is well-positioned to flourish. The careful work of attending to questions of structure, resources, and shared responsibility is itself holy work. We have learned in our own contexts that such discernment cannot be rushed. We have also learned the cost of long waiting, and so we trust that this work will be pursued with urgency as well as care, so that the promise now made to the Diné church may be fulfilled in full and in good time.
For our part, we stand ready, as members of the global Indigenous Anglican family, to walk alongside the Church in Navajoland: to uphold their dignity and sacred worth, and to provide any ongoing material, administrative, and pastoral support that they may request of us, so that they may lay the foundations for their own future flourishing as a sovereign people.
Our kinship and solidarity with the Church in Navajoland is not new. Our forebears made commitments many decades ago to support one another as Indigenous Anglicans, and those relationships were rejuvenated and deepened through our four-nation pilgrimage to Navajoland in 2025. We see in our Diné brothers and sisters a people who are deserving and ready, for the first time in the history of their beloved Church, to discern and elect a Bishop of their own choosing.
We remain committed to journeying alongside Navajoland until a first Bishop Diocesan is called to shepherd our beloved Diné family, who dwell between the four sacred mountains of Navajoland.
May God bless and keep you.
Yours in Christ,
The Most Reverend Dr Don Tamihere, Archbishop & Primate, The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
The Most Reverend Marinez Bassotto, Archbishop & Primate of the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil; Bishop of Amazonia
The Most Reverend Chris Harper, National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop and Presiding Elder of Sacred Circle, Anglican Church of Canada
The Right Reverend Daniel Gutiérrez, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania