Eight denominations signed a joint statement in March expressing their commitment “to implement the principles, norms, and standards of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation.”
Until we feel enough shame to make us feel vulnerable, I’m not sure we can move ahead. But moving ahead is where we need to aim.
The sound of the drums and the songs rang out as 10,000 people turned the corner to Ottawa City Hall. This Walk for Reconciliation marked the beginning of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s closing events.
Reconciliation isn’t easy, even when the truth is known.
As I sat there watching people coming in to register, I began to feel myself being pulled into my past. I felt like I was back at the residential school being dropped off as a young child. A strange place. Strange people. Strange language. I started shaking.
Just as soldiers who went to fight did not hear of the Holocaust until after they returned, so we who were raised in Canada were never taught the story of residential schools.
Now that the TRC has come to a close, a challenge for us as citizens of both God’s Kingdom and Canada, will be that our First Nations and Aboriginal peoples continue to be a priority of our mission and outreach mandates.
As a lay missionary working with Anishinabe people on Manitoba’s Keeseekowenin and Rolling River reserves in the 1970s, I, like other missionaries at the time, was given lessons in how to learn any language and cross-cultural communications.
I am not an addictions counsellor or psychologist of any kind, but I am on my own healing journey from addictions.
Nothing prepared me for the experience of sitting through the testimony of survivors of residential schools. I winced and I wept. It moved our church’s 1994 apology from my head to my heart.
I began each day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission event by visiting the sacred fire. I’d sit on a dew-covered bleacher, fingers wrapped tightly […]
As I contemplate our family trip to Christian Island today for a picnic at the Christian Island Lighthouse, I think back over the last eight […]
A special celebration at New St. James, London, Ont., was a way for the congregation’s Karen families to give back to the church they now […]
On Dec. 5, drums echoed in the hall of St. Andrew’s, Lethbridge, Alta., in celebration of the government’s endorsement of a UN Declaration on the […]
Three events in the early 1990s precipitated a crisis of faith and a reconsideration of my relationship with aboriginal peoples — indeed, with all people. […]
The first day of the event was bright and sunny, then the next two days were gusty and rainy, as if Mother Earth was there […]
“So where are you taking us?” Linda asked coyly. Halden and his fiancée, Laurie insisted that we keep the night of Sept. 12 free. “We […]