Indigenous Justice

We just moved – packed up all we own and migrated across the Rockies and across the Georgia Strait. We’re now in a town that shares borders with two reserves. I admit that I don’t know a great deal about these neighbours. That’s not entirely true; at a certain level, I’ve learned a great deal. I know that they are the first residents of this land. I know that through a series of treaties and promises and no shortage of sneakiness and partial truths, we managed to squeeze them onto small reserves.

Many people today, not just Christians, have a growing sense of God’s participation in their life. What is interesting is that for many, perhaps even most of the people who can do that, at the same time that our sense of God’s personal  activity in our lives has grown, our sense of God’s activity in the world around us has diminished.

Our colleague Shannon Perez has a habit of asking zinger questions. As five of us colleagues sat in a Skype circle debriefing our experience of the Vancouver Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) she asked us:

Equipped with the testimonies of the survivors, what in your life will you turn way from, and what will you turn towards God? How will you back this repentance up with action?

See what I mean by zinger? Shannon’s point is actually pretty simple – we can’t come away from the experience of a TRC and its brutal and beautiful truths unchanged.   

Before presenting a conference paper, academics who study Aboriginal history have a tradition of acknowledging the First Nations upon whose traditional lands they are standing. This stems from historic traditions that began before Europeans showed up in Canada, when First Nations would request permission to pass through other peoples’ lands when travelling for any reason. This is a common human practice; across the globe civilizations used similar practices.

It started with a question: "Can we do Show of Hands?"

A little baffled by the question, I asked for more information. It was a justice initiative put on by the Office of Social Justice. I remembered seeing something about it on a mailing a few months before but had nowhere to go with it so it was filed under "R" (a big blue recycling bin under my desk).

At a recent Day of Encouragement focused on issues of Indigenous Justice and Reconciliation, held in Truro, NS, a pastor pulled us aside and said: “Something’s happening here. I’m not sure what it is, but God’s Spirit is at work.”