Image
Left to right: Perry Bellegarde, Marie Wilson and Ray Jones. © The United Church of Canada

Left to right: Perry Bellegarde, Marie Wilson and Ray Jones. © The United Church of Canada

Photo:

*By Kristine Greenaway

What do Indigenous peoples expect of churches in light of the report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on church-run residential schools for aboriginal children? Ray Jones, an indigenous leader in the United Church of Canada, responds in an interview with World Council of Churches (WCC) Communication.

The TRC’s report offers the chance to rebalance relationships with Indigenous peoples, says Ray Jones, a residential school survivor.

Jones, who spent five years in a residential school as a child, says that through attempts to strip aboriginal children of their traditions and languages in the schools, Canada had “overturned the canoe” carrying Indigenous peoples and other Canadians.

“Now the TRC has given a chance to refloat the canoe in terms of our relationships with aboriginal people, especially residential school survivors and their families,” says Jones.

The TRC report released in June, following six years of commission hearings, contains 94 recommendations addressed to the country’s federal and provincial governments and society at large, with many addressed to churches in particular. The residential schools were administered by Christian churches under an agreement with the Canadian government.

As a child, Jones suffered loneliness and hunger in a school in western Canada. Today the hereditary chief of the Fireweed Clan is a leader in The United Church of Canada where he chairs the church’s national Aboriginal Ministries Council (AMC).

Many of the TRC’s recommendations were addressed directly or indirectly to the country’s churches. In response, The United Church of Canada has made a commitment to ongoing efforts at reconciliation with survivors, their families and their communities.

Reparation from the church for broken promises is key to reconciliation, Jones says. This means it is time for the church to honour its historic commitment to maintain church buildings and provide paid clergy for Indigenous communities.

“Missionaries built churches and manses as symbols of the Christian faith. In return, the churches promised to maintain the buildings and to ensure that there were ministers to serve the parishes,” Jones says.

In recent years, however, declining church income has meant reduced support for local ministries and building maintenance. There are 62 aboriginal ministries (including parishes and missions) of which 30 are served by paid ministry personnel: some of these are students or retired clergy. The total number of church buildings in need of repair is currently being evaluated.

“We want to renew the focus of the church as a spiritual centre of the community,” Jones says, “[but] when buildings deteriorate and ministers no longer come to the communities, it contributes to less and less enrolment in local church activity.”

In order to house and maintain a renewed Indigenous church, mainline congregations will be invited to consider sharing proceeds of sales of their now-empty church buildings in order to build churches to serve as symbols of a new form of church presence in Indigenous communities.

Parishes associated with the United Church’s Aboriginal Ministries Council will determine which model of ministry is needed in their context. This will involve developing partnerships in the wider community for creating sustainable and responsive forms of ministry and service – relationships built on respect and trust.

As increasing numbers of Indigenous people study for lay and ordained ministry through programmes at the Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre and the Native Ministry Programme of the Vancouver School of Theology, the need for renewed infrastructure is pressing. These new leaders will be needed as the church seeks to respond to the TRC’s call to make statements of “confession and affirmation” to redress a history of “devaluing and discrediting traditional spiritual practice.”

Jones says this will mean learning how to be together in the church in ways that don’t allow “the majority church to impose its culture and language and systems onto the First Peoples of Turtle Island” – a reference to Indigenous peoples’ traditional belief that the world took shape on a turtle’s back.

“Reconciliation doesn’t mean immediacy,” Jones cautions. “It will take concentrated time and action.”

This interview is the third and the last in a three-part series of news articles featuring answers from a TRC Commissioner, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and a leading Indigenous Elder from The United Church of Canada.

* Kristine Greenaway is a former WCC communication director with extensive experience in covering stories about global and local ecumenism.

More about the TRC

“Children are the heroes of the aboriginal residential schools story” (WCC feature article of 25 September 2015)

Canada’s First Nations urges churches to press for improved conditions in aboriginal communities (WCC feature article of 08 October 2015)

WCC child rights engagement