A New Resource Packet to Deepen our Discipleship of Decolonization

Since the 2021 publication of Elaine Enns and Ched Myers’ ground-breaking Healing Haunted Histories, we and other groups around North America have been experimenting with how to workshop the Landlines, Bloodlines and Songlines process. The book continues to resonate in faith and justice circles, including church adult education groups, articulating how the call to follow Jesus is also a summons to decolonization. So a BCM task force has crafted a companion resource packet to help facilitators and group participants engage past and continuing harms of settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession, and deepen practices of restorative solidarity.

The Throughlines Study Guide for Groups includes:
49-page Facilitator’s Guide (PDF): Step-by-step instructions to lead your group through difficult but life-giving conversations and commitments.
27-page Participant Workbook (PDF): Mapping exercises and worksheets to help participants decode “family myths” and find their “Songlines” of resistance and solidarity.
9 Key Concept Videos: Links and downloadable files for nine 15-to-30-minute videos narrated by author Elaine Enns.
40%-off this packet this month (a shared cost of only $20 per participant for a group of nine); and we’re offering a
40%-off coupon for participants to purchase Healing Haunted Histories for the study from the publisher.

The Ten-Session Journey: From History to Healing

Throughlines is structured as a 10-session deep dive (which can be hosted in-person or online) into learners’ personal and collective histories. After the first introductory session, each includes a brief video that can be used during the session or assigned for homework prior to the session: Introduction – Hauntings and healings: identifying wounds of colonization.
1. Landlines I – Origins – Where our ancestors walked from and why.
2. Bloodlines I – Family Stories – Mapping trauma, moral injury and implication in colonization.
3. Songlines I – Courage and Resistance – Sacred traditions and counter-narratives that sustained our ancestors.
4. Theological Interlude – Biblical warning tales.
5. Landlines II – Resettlement – Our settler footprints and their impacts on Indigenous life.
6. Bloodlines II – De-Assimilating – “Becoming white” and settler moves to innocence.
7. Songlines II – Traditions of Restoration – Practices of faith, Spirit and engagement.
8. Healing Hauntings – Key practices in a discipleship of decolonization.
9. Restorative Solidarity – Committing to a lifelong journey.

Equip Your Group for Action

Mapping family migrations, traditions and history is a powerful start, but the journey doesn’t end there. Decolonization requires moving from head-knowledge to heart-and-hand work. Throughlines will help your group avoid traps of “endless study,” “exoneration by conscientization,” or “checkbook charity,” outlining a framework we call the Four Rs:

• Re-schooling: Ways to keep “unlearning” and growing. 
• Relationship Building: How to show up, listen, and build authentic friendships with Indigenous communities, joining the work of repair they are already leading.
• Restorative Actions: How to support and follow the lead of Indigenous justice initiatives and social movements of solidarity.
• Reparative Experiments: Practices of sharing resources, money, and land for healing and justice.

What people are saying about HHH Study Groups:

“The HHH study group provided a helpful structure to read the book, to research family and church histories and their impact on Indigenous communities… the study group offered opportunities for prayer, story-telling and inspiration that equipped participants to actually do the work.” — Heidi Regier Kreider, Mennonite Church USA

“Such a remarkable, life-changing book for me. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read it with Elaine. I not only will recommend it, but place it at the top of my list for congregations that are interested in moving deeper into anti-racism work—moving from study to action, healing and repair, restorative justice and reparations.” — Rick Ufford Chase (former moderator, Presbyterian Church USA)

“How grateful I am for having been through this study! … The material is superb; I commented many times to my husband that HHH was refreshingly deep, and well-researched. … Going through the book itself I often had this odd sense of being in a place I’d never been before—learning new ways of seeing—and simultaneously being at home. I have many things to process yet!” — Cindy Kai Anderson (consultant, adjunct faculty at George Fox University)