Indigenous Justice

The Coastal Link pipeline and the planned Kitimat LNG terminal was heralded as the biggest private sector investment in the history of Canada. Prime Minister Trudeau and B.C. Premier Horgan celebrated this investment milestone in a major news conference in October 2018 as an example of getting resource and economic development right - in collaboration with resource and pipeline companies and First Nations along the route.   

Last week, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested peaceful participants of a blockade of a road on traditional Wet'suwet'en nation  territory, based on an injunction order that was issued last month to TransCanada Pipelines. The Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs were blocking access to the land because they have not given their consent to the natural gas pipeline, or two other proposed pipelines coming through their lands. The land is unceded by the Wetsu’wet’en.

A reflection for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls: 

I saw you first walking out of the hotel parking lot to the highway
You had your purse with you and a commitment to go as you zippered up your sweater, bracing yourself.
My first instinct was to yell out to you to not go but I don’t know why you were leaving, maybe it was worse to stay at the hotel on the highway.
Don’t walk to the city on the highway I still am thinking— 
I said a prayer for you in hopes that you are kept safe.
This is the world I live in.

I currently live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the traditional home of the Anishinabe people for thousands of years. I am the daughter of colonizers and settlers, a white, American-born woman on this land. I’m not a first generation settler, but I’m a settler all the same.

We noticed her standing just inside the front entrance looking up. While she was waiting to load her bus with the summer camp kids, she had stepped into the church foyer and saw the land acknowledgement: The Community Christian Reformed Church of Meadowvale is located on the Treaty Lands and Traditional Territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Have you ever seen a tree so large that as you walked towards it you could not see the top and all perspectives of height began to whirl within you?

We live in a land that was once covered in trees so expansive that you would have to make a concerted effort to walk around them. Trees that stood for generations. Trees that were nourished by salmon carcasses strewn about the forest by eagles, wolves, and bears. Trees that welcomed new life into the world, provided clothes and baskets, and then stood watch as lives waned and returned to the earth.

We so rarely know where we really are. We drive around in cars, spend our days under fluorescent lights in artificially re-circulated air, staring at screens and moving so quickly from task to task the actual location where all this happens hardly matters. We move from the city of our birth to another, and then another, and another, following education, jobs, and opportunities.

Have you ever had the experience of reading something and suddenly all kinds of connections start going off in your head? I had that experience a few years ago when I first read about the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, the covenant that held together the Indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes before settlers appeared. This wampum seemed to echo and affirm material that I had been teaching on creation. I would like to explore the parallels and their implications briefly with you.

This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in a learning tour with the Canadian Aboriginal Ministry Committee, World Renew, and the CRC Office of Race Relations focusing on places of racism, resistance, resilience, and reconciliation within urban Indigenous communities in southwestern Ontario. One of the places we visited was Aamjiwnaang First Nation, located on the St. Clair River, within the Sarnia city limits.

Kids can be pretty focused on fairness. "Elijah got more cake than me!" "Sarah isn't sharing the swing with me!" If you work or live with kids, these might be common refrains in your life!