Terry M. Wildman first had the idea of translating the New Testament over 20 years ago. Wildman was living on the Hopi Indian Reservation and serving as a pastor on Second Mesa when he found a Hopi translation of the New Testament in a church basement. “I couldn’t find anyone who could read from it,” he says. “And it wasn’t until much later that I discovered this was true across North America—very few Native people can read in their Native languages.”

Over two decades later, this small project that began in a church basement became the First Nations Version, an English retelling of the New Testament that seeks to connect scripture with the lived out reality of Native people around North America. As the introduction to the book says, the book “is not a word-for-word translation, but rather a thought-for-thought translation.” It is the New Testament retold in language that echoes oral storytelling: “This way of speaking, with its simple yet profound beauty and rich cultural idioms, still resonates in the hearts of Native people,” the book’s translation council writes.