HELLO!

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in Canada in 2008 with the purpose of documenting the history and lasting impacts of the Residential Schools. The TRC concluded its work in 2015 with 94 “Calls to Action” regarding reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous people.” Five of those Calls to Action were directed churches, including #60 “We call upon leaders of the church parties to the Settlement Agreement and all other faiths, in collaboration with Indigenous spiritual leaders, Survivors, schools of theology, seminaries, and other religious training centres, to develop and teach curriculum for all student clergy, and all clergy and staff who work in Aboriginal communities, on the need to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own right, the history and legacy of residential schools and the roles of the church parties in that system, the history and legacy of religious conflict in Aboriginal families and communities, and the responsibility that churches have to mitigate such conflicts and prevent spiritual violence.”

History records the first explorers arriving in Canada, jubilantly reported back to Britain and France: “there are no people here!” They saw the Indigenous people, not as people, and did not acknowledge it was their land. They were not the first to discover it; it was already inhabited! They arrogantly saw this land as theirs for the taking. Author William Faulkner wrote: “the past is never dead…it is not even past. It continues to impact us in the present”. The importance of us learning to see, in learning from the past, being educated, is a key part of reconciliation.

There is a quote, attributed to Maya Angelou, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better". The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its 94 calls to action are more than a decade old. Of those 94, 38 are underway or complete. 17 are not yet started and 29 are in the planning phases. Clearly, we, today, have not yet arrived. There are still, it seems, many opportunities for us to do better. Have you ever heard of the Doctrine of Discovery? It was a principle first articulated in 1455, before John Cabot, Francis Drake, Samuel Champlain and others arrived here, claiming territory for their sponsors. In short, they came with legal and religious authority for Christian empires to invade and subjugate non-Christian lands, impose Christianity on these populations and claim their resources. Like those first explorers who proclaimed, “There are no people here”, those Christians met peoples who knew God, prayed, and felt connected to their Creator. Yet, all of that was ignored, “they” knew better. There was no listening, no sense God spoke through those who looked and worshipped differently than they. To know God is to know “the other”.

Indigenous Peoples have renewed and awakened my sense of presence in landscape-nature, the connection of all God’s creatures and places. And in the context of Climate Change, where scientists are telling us our time to make the changes necessary for our survival is running out, we are moving in the wrong direction. I believe the only way to change this is to adopt more of our Indigenous People’s spirituality (Recommendation #60), to see the Creator’s presence in more than just humanity, in more than just humanity that looks and sounds like us. I believe the only salvation to our Climate woes comes from an appreciation of Indigenous spirituality.

Peace, Kevin