When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Recommendations concerning the Canadian residential schools for first nations came out in 2015, lead commissioner Senator Murray Sinclair said to The Ottawa Citizen, “This is not an aboriginal problem. This is a Canadian problem. Because at the same time that aboriginal people were being demeaned in the schools and their culture and language were being taken away from them and they were being told that they were inferior, they were pagans, that they were heathens and savages and that they were unworthy of being respected — that very same message was being given to the non-aboriginal children in the public schools as well.
This Sunday, April 29, New Vision folks will have an opportunity in worship to work at writing a different image of themselves and first nations persons on their hearts. Ken Kirkwood, a friend of New Vision, joins us. He has committed himself to finding pathways for Canadians to come into right relationship with first nations peoples. He will be joining us on Sunday to engage us in “Reconciliation through Music” a pathway on which we might journey with first nations persons together. Later in May, he will be part of a fundraising event of the same name sponsored by the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic in The Music Hall upstairs at New Vision. Funds raised from the May 24 event will support the Two Spirit component of the Legal Clinic’s I AM AFFECTED campaign for first nations people who suffer from the intergenerational trauma of the residential schools.
Hamilton Conference of the United Church is joining New Vision in partnership to support this May 24th event in The Music Hall.
We’ll learn more about the event on Sunday.
On Monday, April 30, at 7 pm in our church hall, New Vision has an incredible opportunity to learn from Palestinian Christian Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek. He has been inspiring readers for three decades with his ideas about justice and reconciliation in the Holy Land. Rev. Ateek is on a book tour of Canada with his latest book, A Palestinian Theology of Liberation: The Bible, Justice, and the Palestine–Israel Conflict. You can learn more about the event and purchase tickets ($10 each) here.
See you Sunday ~
Rev. Ian