A Response to Last Week's Indigenous-led Service - June 27, 2021

Recorded Worship on YouTube

Joshua 9:6-8, 14-20

Calls to Action - Deborah Laforet

Let us pray.  May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by the Spirit and be words of wisdom for this today.  Amen. 

I really hope you were able to watch last week’s service.  We were honoured with a gift from Toronto Urban Native ministry of videos with drumming, smudging, praying, and reflections that offered some thoughts and wisdom on reconciliation and justice with indigenous peoples in Canada.  Today, I thought we’d follow up on that service and talk a bit about our role in indigenous justice, as a church community and as individuals, especially as hundreds, 751, unmarked graves were uncovered in this country in Saskatchewan.

First, we’ll look at conquest through the lens of our bible, specifically through the book of Joshua.  Pat read a story for us and it’s just part of a larger story in which Joshua, commanded and led by God, as we are told, conquers the people living in Canaan, a land ‘promised’ to the Israelites by God.  Now there is no historical proof that these events happened - that the Hebrew people, freed from slavery in Egypt, wandered the desert, and then conquered Canaan.  These could be the stories and legends of a people who were themselves constantly conquered, continually pushed from their land, oppressed and subjugated by other conquering nations.  These may be stories and legends telling of a time when Israel was strong, when they conquered, pushed, oppressed, and subjugated, stories showing the might and strength of their nation  These stories in Joshua sound horrific to us today when we read about a god who commands a nation to massacre people, obliterate people and their livestock, taking over a land that they really had no right to take over.  These stories have been lifted up by Indigenous peoples as examples of how settler people came into this land and conquered it, with no regard for the people currently upon it, massacring people, in the name of their god.

The story we heard today from our bible is the story of one of the peoples of Canaan who were so afraid of the Israelites and the possible massacre of their people, that they tricked the Israelites into a treaty.  They pretended to be from far away, not from Canaan.  They pretended that they had heard about this mighty and wonderful and all-powerful God of Israel and had come to serve the Israelites in return for the Israelites not harming any of them, in any way.  Joshua and the other leaders, convinced they were not from Canaan, agreed.  They swore to their god that they would not harm these people.  Then when they discovered that these people actually lived in Canaan, they were upset, but felt they had to honour this treaty.  Joshua wondered why a whole group of people would swear to serve another people, not understanding the fear and terror that their conquest had caused.  Three times in this passage though, it states that the Israelites would not harm these people because of the treaty that had been made between them, that they had sworn before the Lord, their God.

Unfortunately, this is not the experience of indigenous peoples in Canada or the U.S.  Many treaties were made, some in good faith, some not, but all of them have been broken in one way or another.  Now today, we are finding hundreds of children in unmarked graves, it will probably be thousands, buried without knowledge of their families, as young as three years old.  Today, there are substance abuse problems and dysfunctional families, because of past traumas in residential schools, because of cultures being stripped away, land being taken, laws created that restrict and punish people for being native in this country.  Today communities still have no drinking water and housing is poor or unattainable.  

In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada endeavoured to hear the stories of those people and their families who had experienced residential schools.  The Commission travelled this country and heard stories and recorded them.  In 2015, they wrote a report which consisted of 94 calls to action.  These calls to action were on several topics but four of them were directly addressed to churches.

#58 - I’m not going to read this because it is a call to the Pope to issue an apology, within one year of this report.  They are still waiting.

The second one, number 59, calls upon churches to “develop ongoing education strategies to ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church’s role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary.”  There is a CBC website keeping track of the status of these calls to action.  This one is shown as complete.  I think there is still a lot of work to be done here, but, yes, there are ongoing strategies.

The third one, number 60, call upon churches “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.”  This one and the next one are reported as being ‘underway.’  I was a student minister in 2003-2007, the years before the Commission did its work, and learning about Indigenous Justice was included in my curriculum and continues to be offered to ministers, and everyone, in this church.

#61: The fourth and final call, number 61, is a call upon churches, “in collaboration with Survivors and representatives of Aboriginal organizations, to establish permanent funding to Aboriginal people for: 

  1. Community-controlled healing and reconciliation projects.

  2. Community-controlled culture- and language revitalization projects.

  3. Community-controlled education and relationship building projects.

  4. Regional dialogues for Indigenous spiritual leaders and youth to discuss Indigenous spirituality, self-determination, and reconciliation.”

The United Church has been a part of these dialogues for a long time, and permanent funding is in the form of the United Church Healing Fund, a fund administered by indigenous communities across Canada.

Now, most of the action taken on these calls has been done by the staff of the United Church Office, theological schools, retreat centres, and a few congregations across Canada.  What does it look like for St. Paul’s to implement these actions?  What does it look like for individual congregations, like St. Paul’s, to live out the United Church apologies from 1986 and 1998?  How might St. Paul’s support the Healing Fund?  How might we educate each other, educate our Sunday School and youth?  

Two years ago, Daryl and I worked on a worship series, focusing on Indigenous justice.  What lasting impact has it had on our community, if any?  Are there other ways for us to engage with truth and reconciliation that would touch our hearts, make a difference to our church community and Oakville community, and strengthen our relations with the Indigenous people on whose land we reside?

Lots of questions and not a whole lot of answers.  Just as our Affirming work has been and is being led by lay people in this congregation with ministers supporting the work, the same needs to be done with this important work.  It can be supported and inspired by staff, by Carolyn, Catherine, Tracy, and myself, but it needs to be led by the congregation to be truly authentic and long-lasting.

For two years, we focused on what it means to an Affirming community.  We are still doing that work but is there now space to broaden this initiative?  Our Affirming vision includes all people.  Maybe it’s time to look beyond sexual orientation and gender identity to race, culture, and disability.  To be Affirming is like a big beautiful rainbow umbrella, encompassing all God’s magnificent creation, people of all colours, people of all faiths, people of all cultures, people of all abilities - ALL people.

As our guest speaker, Evan Swance-Smith, said to us last week.  “We are a resilient people.  We are a people of God, and we will overcome any of the darkness that this world puts before us.”  Now Evan was talking about the Indigenous peoples, but it applies to everyone.  We all need to support one another in overcoming difficulties, struggles, pain, and the suffering that we encounter in this world, some more than others.  As a church, as an individual, we need to determine our role in that work.

May we continue to learn what it means to be a settler people and how to be in relationship with our Indigenous siblings.  May we continue to listen to the grief and the trauma of Indigenous peoples, as well as the joy and celebration of these resilient peoples.  May Creator, Christ, and Spirit be our guide and our wisdom.  May it so.  Amen.

Deborah Laforet