Episcopal Press and News
Native Son Chosen As Navajoland Bishop
Episcopal News Service. July 6, 1989 [89123]
Owanah Anderson, Staff Officer for Indian Ministry, Episcopal Church Center
COALMINE, N.M. (DPS, July 6) -- On June 10, beneath a red and white striped tent adjacent to St. Mark's Episcopal Church here in westernmost New Mexico, Steven Tsosie Plummer, first Navajo ordained to the Episcopal priesthood, was named by the annual convocation of the Navajoland Area Mission to be next Bishop of Navajoland. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church will act on the recommendation when they meet in Philadelphia in the fall (September 22-29).
The historic vote was taken less than two miles from the hogan where Plummer was born 45 years ago. The community of St. Mark's, precariously anchored to a dusty semi-desert incline that sweeps down toward a dry arroyo, consists of a dozen houses, mobile homes, and traditional log-and-sod, eight-sided Navajo hogans. Located five miles from a paved road, the community was once solidly Episcopalian, an outgrowth of a 1915 mission effort sparked by New England women medical missionaries who founded the Mission of the Good Shepherd, at nearby Fort Defiance, Arizona.
St. Mark's is near the open-pit mine of the Peabody Coal Company where the teenage Plummer worked beside many of the men of his family.
General Convention of 1988 voted to enable the uniquely structured Navajoland Area Mission to nominate its own bishop, with assurance that the House of Bishops would honor its selection. The 28 voting delegates at the fourteenth annual Navajoland Convocation were offered two options by the Nominating Committee: they could vote to name their native son as choice for bishop; or they could continue with a bishop appointed by the Presiding Bishop. Nineteen delegates voted for Plummer; seven voted to continue under an appointee; and two abstained.
Since its establishment in 1977, Navajoland Area Mission has been served by three appointed bishops -- Fred Putnam, the late Wesley Frensdorff, and William Wolfrum, Suffragan Bishop of Colorado. Frensdorff and Wolfrum served on a part-time basis.
Plummer will not be consecrated until early 1990 because of heavy demands on the schedule of the Presiding Bishop. Wolfrum, installed as interim bishop in December 1988, will continue oversight until the consecration. Plummer, as "adah sedahi" 'presiding elder), will begin to assume administrative responsibilities in the transition period.
Plummer's study for the priesthood has been vastly different from the standard pattern of the Episcopal Church. Reared in a non-English-speaking home, he dropped out of Albuquerque Indian School in the ninth grade to help his mother haul water and gather wood. At 21, he entered Cook Christian Training School in Tempe, Arizona, and later earned his GED at San Juan Community College in Farmington, New Mexico.
In 1968, a priest named Harold S. Jones, who would have enormous influence on Plummer, became vicar of the Fort Defiance mission. [In 1972, Jones would be elected Suffragan Bishop of South Dakota and the first American Indian bishop.] A Santee Sioux, Jones encouraged Plummer and formed a "faculty" at Fort Defiance to prepare Plummer for seminary study. Mentors included Jones, James Thompson (assistant vicar of Fort Defiance mission), and June Coureaud, a Boston-born volunteer in mission in Navajoland. Coureaud served as Plummer's English-language coach.
After two year's study at Phoenix Junior College, Phoenix, Arizona, Plummer entered the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in Berkeley, California, and was awarded a certificate in 1975. He was ordained to the diaconate in July 1975 and to the priesthood in June of the following year by the Rt. Rev. Joseph M. Harte, Bishop of Arizona. Plummer's ordination to the priesthood was held at Canyon de Chelley, revered as a holy place in Navajo tradition.
After ordination, Plummer served in the Arizona region of the Navajo Reservation. In 1983, he was appointed Utah Regional Vicar, serving three congregations: St. Christopher's at Bluff; San JuanBatista at Montezuma Creek; and St. Mary of the Moonlight at Oljeta in Monument Valley.
In 1977, Plummer married the former Catherine B. Tso. They have four children -- Bryan, Byron, Steven, Jr., and Cathlena.