Terry Wildman saw a picture in his mind while praying one day. He saw several pottery jars, some with First Nations designs, some with Celtic designs, some African, Asian, and many others. He also saw a hand pouring water into each jar.

“It was like Creator was showing me that he has poured some portions of his gifts of grace into each ethnic group,” says Wildman, who is lead translator and project manager for the First Nations Version (FNV) and author of the children’s picture book Birth of the Chosen One, which released last month.

Both are projects of the heart for Wildman (Ojibwe and Yaqui), who also has a leather-bound FNV New Testament and the Psalms and Proverbs FNV releasing next year. “Christmas, the story of Jesus’s birth, is known worldwide and celebrated by many of our Indigenous peoples in North America,” he says. “We felt it was a good initial story to tell in a First Nations style for all children who love Christmas.”

He’s researched a number of First Nations birth stories, including the story of the Great Peacemaker in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tradition and a Northern Coastal Tribes version of the birth of a spirit, Raven, that takes back the light from a thief, just as Jesus brings light to the world.

“Most First Nations stories are grounded in a locality and are for a local community,” Wildman says. “In the story of Jesus, even though there is a local tribal element—the Jewish people—the message is one of healing and redemption for the entire world.”

That same spirit imbues the First Nations Version, which released in 2021 and has sold more than 80,000 copies. Wildman did the initial translation work using Logos Bible Software, which offers access to Hebrew, Greek, and other resources. He passed it to members of the Translation Council, who hail from many tribal nations, for suggested changes, and then to language professors and translation consultants for review.

FNV editor Al Hsu of IVP describes the translation as one of dynamic equivalence, which emphasizes the overall meaning of the passage. This means that in the FNV translation, Luke 15:22 says of the prodigal son’s return, “Give him a headdress of feathers for his head and new moccasins for his feet!”

“The FNV stands in the long tradition of faithful dynamic equivalence English translations that make Scripture come alive for contemporary readers,” Hsu says. “We may have missed some things in Scripture because of white Western lenses. A word like ‘sin’ might seem like a theological abstraction, but the FNV’s rendering of ‘bad hearts’ or ‘broken ways’ provides a more tangible, concrete picture.”

That sensibility applies to Birth of the Chosen One, in which characters are depicted in Native dress and there are different names for people and places. Mary is referred to as “Bitter Tears,” and the angel Gabriel as “Creator’s Mighty One.”

“The use of words and phrases that resonate with First Nations people means that the Christian story is retold in a way that relates to the First Nations people of North America,” says Elissa Schauer, children’s editor at IVP. “Reimagining the story of [Jesus’s] birth in ways that are relevant to our respective cultures helps remind us that Jesus came for all people.

”Wildman speaks to the importance of the FNV and Birth of the Chosen One as part of a healing and restoration process for Indigenous peoples. “Because of generations of government assimilation policies, participated in by many church and mission organizations, most First Nations people do not have the opportunity to read the story of Jesus in their heart languages,” he says. “We hope that presenting this message with a storytelling emphasis and using wording in English that translates well to our First Nations people will allow them to evaluate his message apart from the colonial misrepresentation.”