Each day we are confronted with news about the trucker convoy. Each day we are asked to believe their rhetoric about the curtailing of rights and freedoms while excusing the symbols of hate, the coopting of the trauma of residential school survivors and their families with Every Child Matters flags on vehicles, the disrespectful appropriation of the smudging ceremony with a smudge stick in one hand and a beer in the other.

Meanwhile, we are told that the police are impeded by the rights of protesters, hampered by the justifications of lawyers for the blocking of roadways, the restriction of rights of access for citizens and the lack of arrests in favour of ticketing for infractions, and no movement to dismantle blockades (as has been done in every other instance in Canada in the past).

Our society is on the brink of a kairos moment that will define us for a generation. Will we continue to make excuses and exceptions when white grievances are put on the table? Or will we find the resolve to uphold our higher ideals of science, community safety during a pandemic, and support for our institutions of healing and medicine?

As we wait to see how this will play out in the daily scrum of reporters vying for perspectives, we miss the institutional responsibilities of government; we miss the liability and partisanship of individual parties; we miss the double standard emerging that is emboldening right-wing hate groups and their supporters.

We live in a system that excuses accountability and covers over its racist acts with claims of helplessness and fragility when it comes to certain populations. This is not an isolated problem, it is occurring from Ottawa to the Alberta border and is growing in major cities across the country and now worldwide.

As a denomination, The United Church of Canada has committed itself to the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action and to becoming an anti-racist denomination. The United Church has positioned itself as an advocate for anti-racism and reconciliation, which includes the dismantling of the institutions of racism: namely, white supremacy and white privilege.

In our work this includes:

• Upholding the work of reconciliation through the TRC Calls to Action;

• Dismantling racism and its structures;

• Speaking out against hate speech, acts of hate

• Calling for accountability of law enforcement, governments and institutions to address systemic issues

• Working toward the common good for all citizens, including our most vulnerable

As we continue the work of ministry through our social justice programs, let us be mindful of this moment and what it is calling us to do for our fellow citizens and the world we want to live in.

Tony Snow is Indigenous MInister for Chinook Winds Region and a member of the Stoney Nakoda First Nation.

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By Chris Mah Poy, Justice and Networks Support & First Third Animator, Chinook Winds Region

This week, Alberta Minister of Education Adriana LaGrange announced that it would delay the implementation of the province’s draft elementary curriculum and its new junior and senior high school curriculum. Thanks to your campaigning and feedback and that of other concerned Albertans, the Government will strike a new advisory group and has announced that more changes will be made to reflect the concerns of Indigenous Albertans. 

At the Chinook Winds Regional Council Gathering in May 2021, the Region committed to campaign for changes to the Alberta government’s proposed K-6 school curriculum. As well, Chinook Winds Communities of Faith and also United Church individuals wrote to the provincial government. The proposed curriculum had many concerning issues and omissions. We were specifically concerned about the lack of inclusion of both historical and current Indigenous perspectives in all grades, and that the curriculum did not fully respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action regarding education for the Reconciliation. 

The provincial government’s announcement is an important step, and your advocacy has had an impact. However, I am not relieved, indeed I am restless. While the Government has delayed implementation of the draft curriculum and committed to making changes, the new “blueprint” for the social studies curriculum still does not introduce learning about Residential Schools until grade 4, counter to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Friends, our work continues. Please continue to write your local MLA and the Minister of Education, calling for the full implementation of the Education of Reconciliation principles. We are called in our continuing commitment to Reconciliation to demand better of ourselves, our Church and our shared institutions. Please know that your continued advocacy matters, and has a real impact. 

Thank you to Ralph Connor Memorial United, Canmore, AB and the Being Good Relations Network/Circle of Chinook Winds Region and Northern Spirit Region who brought forward the original motion to the Chinook Winds May 2021 meeting.

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From Tony Snow, Indigenous Minister, Chinook Winds Region: 

Truth and Reconciliation Day was established in Canada this year in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to commemorate the history and legacy of residential schools and honour the survivors, their families, and communities.

Regional Commemorative Service. Noon MT
A service to commemorate the history and legacy of residential schools and honour the survivors, their families, and communities.  You’ll be able to access this online service on the Chinook Winds YouTube Channel HERE.

Online Panel with Ecumenical Indigenous Clergy for Truth and Reconciliation Day 7 pm MDTWe gather a distinguished panel of ecumenical Indigenous Clergy voices from various denominations and spaces to discuss the history of residential schools, the impact of intergenerational trauma, the recovery of children’s bodies and the ongoing role of Indigenous ministry in the church’s dialogue about reconciliation today. We welcome special guests: Indigenous Bishop Mark MacDonald from the Anglican Church of Canada, Rev. Beryl St. Germain from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Rev. John Snow Jr. from the UCC Pacific Mountain Regional Council, Rev. Danny Zacharias from the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada and Father Cristino Bouvette from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary. They will join us to discuss the efforts and challenges of reconciliation in their own contexts. 

Via zoom. Everyone Invited! Register HERE

Additional Ways to Mark Truth and Reconciliation Day: 

• Individuals and Communities of Faith may want to spend time reading again The United Church of Canada’s 1986 Apology to Indigenous People, the 1988 response and the 1998 Apology to students of United Church Indian Residential Schools and their families and communities. Download the Apologies and Response HERE

• You may choose to read and reflect on the Calls to the Church.

• Throughout Truth and Reconciliation Week, people are encouraged to wear an orange shirt.

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For years I have prayed for the children, hoping that some mystery of the universe would carry my love back in time and they might feel less alone as they faced their tormentors or drew their last breath.

I have hoped that the Holy One would comfort them – and agonized that the Mystery to whom I have appealed is the one whose name was invoked in order to perpetrate such evil. 

I still pray for the children. 

A few years ago, on a visit home to Whitehorse, my spouse, daughter and I spent a sparkling Yukon summer day in the archives. There, we found photographs of groups of children at the Chooutla school in Carcross. I had heard of the Carcross residential school as the one that my father had attended. 

He rarely spoke of it. I remember something about the boys chopping wood and the girls baking and sewing in the mornings, and then having classes in the afternoons. But it was never discussed at our house. 

The Chooutla school is described in documents from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation as having one of the most violent principals. He, apparently, had to have the boys held down, so brutal were his strappings. 

A photograph from the school shows a group of boys. There is one lad who looks a little like my brother. Something about how he squints into the sun. The dates are right – could that be my father? We have no childhood photographs, so we don’t know. 

There are more, you know. 

There are children buried all over our country, some accounted for, but many, many hastily interred with no recognition, no admitting of guilt, no notice to next of kin. No notice of common humanity. No respect for their little bodies – not enough to call hospitals or doctors, so not enough for recognition. 

And alongside these silent burials are the broken childhoods of so many more. Many are among us, newly traumatized by the “revelations” that they’ve known for years. Many, like my father, have gone to their graves with unutterable secrets.  

Their spirits are saying, “You have heard the truth.” 

And so, having heard the truth, what now?  

Continue to listen. Believe it when someone tells you. Reach out and support Indigenous organizations. Seek to understand systemic racism and to break the chokehold it has on our ways of life. Resist rationalizing. Review the apologies. Read the Calls to Action and take action. Shed the tears, yes. Wear the orange shirt, yes. But when the tears have dried, will this have changed you? Changed us? 

The past is now, for all time exists at once. 

And I still pray for the children. 

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