Re/Placing Ourselves

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.

Trees that were nourished by salmon carcasses strewn about the forest by eagles, wolves, and bears.

These same living forests were re-cast as dollar signs in the eyes of the European settlers. Previously the forests of the west coast were limited only by the depth of the soil, which had been developed and slowly nourished by the sea since the last ice age. Now the mature trees were threatened by the extractive practices of these foreigners to the land. The 1000 year old giants were felled, carved up, and removed.

Just as the settlers removed the trees from the land, they also attempted to remove the peoples who had stewarded the land for thousands of years. Systematically, intentionally.

Mosaic Church exists on land that was robbed.

Mosaic Church exists on land that was robbed. Robbed of its people. Robbed of its trees. Literally, the roots ripped out. The ecosystem destroyed, the way of life dismantled. These realities whirl around us, within us. 

At Mosaic Church we have been building relationships with displaced Indigenous people who have traversed Turtle Island (also known as North America) and now find themselves living in Vancouver, Canada. Our church meets on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam (xʷmәθkʷәy̓әm), Tsleil-Waututh (Sәl̓ílwәtaʔ/Selilwitulh), and Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw) peoples, yet most of the Indigenous people in our community do not trace their ancestry to these Coast Salish peoples. However, they do share what Indigenous theologian Randy Woodley has called the Harmony Way—a worldview common to Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island that understands holistic, harmonious, integrated, and rhythmic living as the good life.*

Perhaps this is nowhere more felt than the Downtown Eastside in which our church is located.

While Vancouver is considered one of the greenest cities in the world (both literally and figuratively), with views of forested, snowcapped mountains, the extractive, disposable, colonial worldview upon which it is built is more present than the distant vistas. Perhaps this is nowhere more felt than the Downtown Eastside in which our church is located. Considered the poorest urban neighbourhood in Canada, our community, our neighbours are limited by government policy, marginalized by gentrification, contained by policing practices, and exploited by ongoing colonialism.

The painful history of the land beneath our feet impacts the way we exist in this space. The trauma inflicted on the land, on the original human inhabitants–both in the past and present–forces us to wrestle with how we occupy this space as a community and as individuals.

The painful history of the land beneath our feet impacts the way we exist in this space.

Each and every day we are somewhere. Perhaps the most pernicious portions of Western-Christian culture are spread by the assumption that we have no culture and we have no land. We barter and trade in cultures, never paying attention to our own, and we purchase and sell land as property, removing ourselves from it. We pretend that we hover over top of the land like dis-embodied spirits that can move from one place to the next without ever “touching down” or caring for the places we inhabit. This is not the case.

We occupy physical spaces, spaces with histories, each week for worship services, for picnics in parks, or even sitting at desks looking at screens. These are the places we pause, places we spend time. But what about those spaces and places we occupy by passing through? We may not think about a road or a sidewalk as a space we occupy, but do we not require that they will always be ready for our use? Whenever we fail to consider the places in which we exist, we continue to unconsciously propagate the doctrine of terra nullius, that the land does not have an innate meaning and purpose, that it is emply, that it is merely there to be taken and used.

We pretend that we hover over top of the land like dis-embodied spirits.

One of the ways our community wrestles with, acknowledges, and disrupts the way we occupy space is by co-hosting a pow-wow. Once a year, in celebration of National Indigenous Peoples Day (June 21st), we move into the street outside the building where we meet. Blockades go up at the ends of the street, redirecting the “normal” (colonial) flow of traffic. An Elder’s tent erected where the centre line begins. A stage built for pow-wow dancers where cars would otherwise slow down to turn into the intersection.

For this day, the land is again a place of intentional ceremony. The flow of events dictated by dancers and salmon BBQing rather than by Western time and stop lights. It is a day in which to relinquish control, to reverse the inviter and the invited. To affirm Indigenous peoples and cultures, for who and what they are. For their gifts, for their wisdom, ways of being and knowing, and their challenge to us of settler cultures. We as settlers are welcomed to the land, the First Nations community structures the event, and we participate in a different ceremonial rhythm.

To our knowledge, facilitating a pow-wow makes us an anomaly among church communities in Canada.

To our knowledge, facilitating a pow-wow makes us an anomaly among church communities in Canada but it flows naturally from Mosaic’s style and mode of being as a church. A significant part of our Sunday services is organized around holding open space for the voices of those present. In our context, we intentionally refrain from the more colonial approach that regiments time and structure, fitting people into the order. By contrast, Mosaic’s conversational teachings and non-linear seating structure makes room for disparate, vulnerable, and ignored voices to be heard, acknowledged, and respected. For us, these are ways we are moving into an understanding and acknowledgement of the Indigenous territories that we occupy.

As the hush that falls upon a group in an ancient forest, Mosaic creates an unconventional church space to allow the quiet to speak volumes and facilitates a community pow-wow to occupy our space in a way that participates in the reintroduction of Indigenous ceremony to a land torn to its roots. 

*Rev. Randy Woodley, PhD, is a Keetoowah Cherokee theologian and is Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture and Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at George Fox Seminary in Portland, Oregon. You can read more about his theological analysis of the Harmony Way in his book, Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision. 

This is the third post in our The Land We Stand On series. Check out Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat's first post and Rebecca's Warren's second post. 

[Photo by John Westrock on Unsplash]