The TRC Calls Churches to Action: Building Capacity for Restorative Solidarity
Oct 14-16, 2016. Fall Institute, Saskatoon, SK
Over 100 church and native leaders wrestled with the “Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action to Churches.” You can see the program booklet here (PDF 1.3MB).
We explored how the Canadian TRC Report impacts Indigenous/Settler relations, and how Christian communities can build right relations. Participants looked at how to educate, advocate and organize around the Calls to Action to churches, including the challenges to:
“formally adopt and comply with the principles, norms, and standards of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for reconciliation” (48);
TRC Calls to Action
and to “repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples, such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius” (49).
Indigenous and non indigenous leaders mapped the new geography for the work of fostering justice and reconciliation, and reflected on how a theology and practice of “restorative solidarity” can help churches rethink discipleship, service, spiritual formation, worship and activism.
image left: Bentwood Box by Coast Salish artist Luke Marston carved for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada learn more