The church as a community has often failed Gordon Williams, but he has never failed to see the church through the eyes of Jesus, his Lord and Saviour,” Rev. Andrew Johnston, minister at St. Andrew’s, Ottawa, told assembly, noting that Williams was once referred to as a “savage” by a member of the Presbyterian Church.
Williams schooled at the Presbyterian-run Birtle Indian Residential School, located west of Winnipeg. He endured the isolation imposed at the school, followed by the frustrations that came with being the only aboriginal student at the University of Manitoba, and then at Presbyterian College, Montreal. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and served congregations in Peace River and Medicine Hat, Alta. But when he sought a call in Ontario, he was told “that parishioners east of Manitoba were not ready to accept Christianity from a ‘savage.'”
He left the ministry and embarked on a 25-year career with the Canadian government. Today, he chairs the Indian Residential School Survivor Committee, and is recognized as a spiritual elder by aboriginal communities across Canada. This was the first assembly he had been invited to attend, having never been sent as a commissioner.
At the opening worship in Cape Breton, outgoing moderator, Rev. Harvey Self apologized to Williams. “Gordon, we are sorry. We apologize. Your church apologizes to you and asks your forgiveness.”
Williams spoke at Tuesday evening’s Truth and Reconciliation event, which also featured Membertou Chief Terry Paul, who was sent to a Catholic residential school at the age of five. With emotion cracking his voice, he thanked the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “We believe it’s an important part of the process of healing. It is an important part because we want to make sure the people in this country hear our voices. Hear what was done.”
Rev. Terry LeBlanc, this year’s E.H. Johnson award winner, also spoke. He talked of the need for aboriginal theological education that weaves together native world views and context. “That aboriginal people were considered ‘godless heathens’ by theists who considered God omnipresent is an idea I think is a little contradictory … I believe the church needs aboriginal people doing theology because I believe the premises on which we base our theology are different.”
Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Marie Wilson gave the assembled a sense of the first national Truth and Reconciliation event to be held the following week in Winnipeg.
“My hope and prayer for us all, from wherever we come, is that we would recognize that we are one people with one Creator and one Great Spirit, that we would all recognize we’re on that long road of learning and we will never cease to learn as we walk along that long road,” concluded the moderator, Rev. Dr. Herb Gale.
