Question 4: Truth & Reconciliation

What do you consider to be important next steps in Niagara’s commitment to truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples living within the diocese and the northern part of Turtle Island known as Canada?

 

Robert Fead: We need to enhance and encourage the ministry of our Diocesan Archdeacon for Truth and Reconciliation. I know that Archdeacon Val Kerr, and others, are engaged in helping all of us to understand the particular needs of our First Nations brothers and sisters and the injustices they have suffered and continue to suffer. I know we have a significant First Nations population living in the city of Hamilton and we have an opportunity to reach out to them and seek ways to build respectful relationships with them and help to address the particular challenges they encounter living in the city. We need to avoid the temptation of telling our indigenous peoples what we are going to do “for them”. That is just another form of cultural colonialism. I believe we need to continue to build relationships of respect and trust and then ask our First Nations peoples what they would like us to do “with them”.  I would also want to continue to support the good work that our Primate and National Church have already done to seek reconciliation and build up respectful relationships.

 

Stuart Pike: I believe we have made a good start in terms of truth and reconciliation in our diocese. The presentation of how far we have come in this at our last Synod was excellent, but it also shows us just how far we have to go! So much of our broken relationships with Indigenous Peoples has been because of the malicious political intent of the few, and the great ignorance and apathy of the many. Now we know more and we cannot be content to leave it as it is. The greatest thing that we can do, going forward, is to continue the education of our people about our brokenness and our need for healing. In my parish a wonderful development came out of our passing a vestry motion about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We committed to learn more about the history and present-day reality of our relationship and the experience of Indigenous Peoples. From that commitment, we have an Indigenous Awareness Program including events like the Blanket Exercise (led by Archdeacon Val Kerr) and inviting an Elder from the Mississaugas of the New Credit to teach us and to share the drum and sing to us. It was a very powerful experience! And we are leading book studies of books written by indigenous authors. These are important steps. It is one way that we can do the most important thing: and that is to listen! The next steps, along with the listening, are steps of advocacy for and with our Indigenous brothers and sisters in finding justice and in healing our relationship. I look forward to working more closely with Indigenous peoples to this end and would encourage each parish to develop an Indigenous Awareness Program as well as developing one for the Diocese.

 

Martha Tatarnic: I became involved in the leadership of PWRDF’s Pikangikum Water Project because I saw that there was a problem with lack of clean water in many Indigenous communities, and I approached our national Indigenous Bishop Mark MacDonald about the possibility of channeling some targeted fundraising toward fixing that problem.  I had a lot to learn about the complexity of our Indigenous people’s needs and how critical it is that we invest in something more than the model of trying to “fix” our Indigenous people – a model that has been shown to be entirely bankrupt.  The teachings I have receive in this partnership with Bishop Mark and the people of Pikangikum also provide important markers for the future of Niagara’s commitment to truth and reconciliation:

• Relationship is key: we must be willing to work together in partnership rather than assuming non-Indigenous Canada has the fix.
• Partnership requires faithfulness. There are no simple solutions.  As we figure out a new way to be with one another as Canadians, to seek justice and work toward reconciliation, we need to know the way forward will involve hard work, set backs, failures along the way, and a great deal of learning on the part of our non-Indigenous people.
• Cost – Although I was initially wrong in my approach to addressing the need for clean water, it has been good for our churches to be willing put money toward something in which we believe. In a country as rich as ours is, it is unacceptable that there would be so many communities living in third world conditions.  In order for there to be reconciliation and justice, we need to know there will be a cost.  

 

David Anderson: In 2016, I was given the opportunity as the Archdeacon of Undermount to represent the diocese at a reconciliation event in Hamilton. I listened to the moving and painful stories of Indian Residential School survivors. Together, all of us in the room sought healing. It was a holy time. After much listening, I was asked to respond on behalf of the church. What can one say? I found myself repeating words that sounded much like Archbishop Peers apology first given in Minaki, in August of 1993. “I am sorry, more than I can say.”

While this remains a time for listening, this is now a time for action. This is a time for us to participate with our Indigenous neighbours in the building of a new, reconciling relationship. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s report included Calls to Action. Several of these calls to action offered direction to the church in its continuing commitment to reconciliation. Many of the calls to action are addressed to us as citizens of Canada.

Here in the Diocese of Niagara we have the opportunity to be leaders in our communities in this important work. Many of our neighbours have a desire to take action, but are unsure where to begin. We are working hard at providing resources so that parishes and groups across our church can engage in this work and to that end, it is vital that we support the Anglican Healing Fund in its goal of raising an additional $1 million for the work of local, community-led healing projects.

 

Susan Bell: In 1986, I was present as the General Council of the United Church of Canada made its formal apology to the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. I watched as the Moderator met with the gathered elders of tribes from across Canada.  It seemed to me that the sorrow of the ages was poured out that night by men and women whose language, culture and families had been deeply damaged by ideas which had failed a people and society.  The apology was not accepted, but received. That signaled to me that something else significant had happened:  that in receiving the apology our Aboriginal sisters and brothers had also established that they would accept it (or not) on their own terms and in their own time.  A new and right spirit had arisen because of this action.

That experience laid down in me a bond of respect for our Indigenous Peoples.  In the years since, I have realized that it is not for us to suggest steps for our Indigenous Peoples to follow but to listen respectfully for what they suggest.  It is for us hear the truth of the experiences, personal stories, and learn the larger historical context.  It is for us to pray for peace and justice and to continue to acknowledge our part in our fractured history as we live and work on the side of reconciliation and justice. 

And, in time, following their leading, it is for us to respond to their directions for next steps.

 

David Burrows: For my first eight years I lived in Iqaluit, NT, immersed in the culture and society of the Inuit. Here, I embraced the reality that all persons deserve respect, acknowledgement, and encouragement. Within the Canadian and Anglican ethos, we have not always been faithful in this reality. In the 1990's the church began healing, through listening, repenting, apologizing, and learning from indigenous cultures and peoples.

The next steps for Niagara:

Affirm the process begun in the national church through our archdeacon and director.  (Apology (1993), Covenant (1994), the work of the Council of the North, the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples, the Reconciliation Animator, and our commitment to the TRC and UNDRIP). 

Affirm our ministry with indigenous peoples beginning in the Hamilton area, expanding to Fort Erie, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls. Emphasize partnerships and links through civic agencies to engage indigenous persons while affirming their holistic growth and development.

Identify through archival material, the unidentified graves of Inuit buried at the Hamilton Sanatorium in order to afford dignity, peace, healing, and apology for their mistreatment.

Listen and provide reflective voice to the ongoing national dialogue with a goal of affirming and enabling a model for a self-determining indigenous church in a fifth province in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Above all, as the people of God, we are called to walk with all through this process, to put on the garments of God’s chosen people, to “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” (Colossians 3:12)

 

Robert Hurkmans: In the Litany for Healing and Restoration, Anglicans are invited to pray: “Touch our hearts, that we may discern your mission in which you call us to be immersed, particularly in partnership with the First Peoples of this land.”  I believe that this prayer identifies three key elements in our ongoing response to the TRC’s Calls to Action:  Touching, Discerning, Immersing. 

Firstly, our hearts need to be continually touched by the stories and experiences of aboriginal peoples.  This means we need to be committed to listening and to providing forums and activities at the parish and diocesan level to continue these healing conversations.  It is through these stories that our hearts are “touched”.

Secondly, our church needs to continue to discern how God is leading us into the work of reconciliation.  Bishop Michael’s decision to appoint the Ven. Val Kerr as the Archdeacon for Truth, Reconciliation and Indigenous Ministry was a prophetic response to the call TRC’s 94 Calls to Action.  With Val’s experience and wisdom we continue to “discern” how God is leading our diocese.

Thirdly we need to be immersed in this ministry of reconciliation.  At our recent Synod Melanie Delva, the Reconciliation Animator for the ACC, challenged us to make reconciliation a “spiritual practice” which is “built in to who we are.”  Reconciliation is also “built into” the gospel we proclaim knowing that “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)

 

In the lead up to the election, the Electoral Synod Nominations and Planning Committee is asking candidates to respond to a final series of questions. We’ll post the responses to two questions each week on our electoral synod webpage and share those responses on Facebook and Twitter too.