We call upon leaders of the church parties to the Settlement Agreement and all other faiths, in collaboration with Indigenous spiritual leaders, Survivors, schools of theology, seminaries, and other religious training centres, to develop and teach curriculum for all student clergy, and all clergy and staff who work in Aboriginal communities, on the need to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own right, the history and legacy of residential schools and the roles of the church parties in that system, the history and legacy of religious conflict in Aboriginal families and communities, and the responsibility that churches have to mitigate such conflicts and prevent spiritual violence.
In plain simple terms Call to Action #60 is a call to train individuals in religious cultural safety, so that people of different faiths may understand each other better.[1] This Call to Action aims to ensure churches and those Christian groups that were involved in the residential school system make a conscious and organized effort to educate their organizations on the harms of what those schools did and take an active role in respecting Aboriginal communities and their members' individual rights to practice spirituality according to the teachings of their ancestors.
Canada is a religiously pluralistic country because of its diverse population. This requires Canadians to act with tolerance and respect, including learning about each other’s faiths and beliefs, and accepting that differences can coexist. These actions can minimize or eliminate the divisiveness, hostility and prejudice seen throughout Canadian history towards Indigenous beliefs and practices associated with their spirituality.[2]
There is a great responsibility of the church parties to mitigate the harms they caused to Indigenous peoples, and addressing these harms requires more than apologies. Our December 2, 2020 post on the Calls to Action #48 and 49 outlining the church parties apologies can be found here: https://ualbertalaw.typepad.com/faculty/2020/12/re-trc-call-to-action-48-49-settlement-agreement-parties-and-undrip.html
It is worth noting that although Pope Benedict expressed his sorrow for those who suffered at the Residential Schools, the Catholic Church has yet to issue a formal apology. This is shameful when considering that the Catholic Church ran 70% of the forced Indian Residential Schooling in Canada.[3]
Acknowledgements and apologies are an important first step, yet without action, they are empty words and empty promises of reconciliation. The spiritual harm and abuse that First Nations, Metis, and Inuit experienced during the era of colonial expansion require extensive education to understand the spiritual relationship with the Creator and with the Land that Indigenous peoples have. This education should include actively unlearning harmful views that place Indigenous ceremonies and practices as sinful in the eyes of God as referred to in the Anglican Church’s “Apology for Spiritual Harm”. This apology was an excellent example of a church taking ownership.[4]
The arrogance of many churches resulted in grievous harm and the great loss of ceremonies and spiritual teachings that have sustained the First Peoples for generations upon generations. The intergenerational spiritual trauma created by the arrogance of many churches may begin to heal by furthering cultural education to church clergy, members, and leaders that identifies the importance of Aboriginal practices and ceremony.
Call to Action #60 is a very difficult recommendation to universally implement in Canada. It took Canada’s Supreme Court until 2017 with the Ktunaxa Nation v. British Columbia [5] case to issue a ruling on Indigenous religious freedom which in the end only ended up showing that the Supreme Court is unable to recognize its own colonial and culturally located position under the Charter.[6]
There is no clear way to make it mandatory for a church organization to develop a curriculum of cultural education that would not violate their s. 2(a) Charter rights. This provision of the Charter works against Aboriginal Peoples in two ways, as previously mentioned and because protection under it requires claimants “to frame their religion in terms that are recognizable to the legal culture of Canada without reference to the colonial foundations of that very legal system or the broader colonial context of Canada”.[7] Essentially indicating that Indigenous religious freedom, under s. 2(a), is currently an impossibility and poses a significant barrier.
From a policy perspective, this is a very difficult recommendation for the government to implement that would be effective, it would need to work with Indigenous communities and organizations cohesively to do so and make significant changes in government policy. Moving forward, it remains up to each religious group to play its own part in working towards reconciliation through cultural education and it will be interesting to see who takes this seriously. [8]
Until Next Time,
Team ReconcilAction YEG
[1] Acadia University, “TRCtalk” online: <http://courseware.acadiau.ca/trctalk/category/calls/>.
[3] CAID.ca, “Church Apologies for Indian Residential Schools”, online: <caid.ca/Dchurch_apology.html>.
[5] https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/16816/index.do
[6] Nicolas Shrubsole, Policy Options, “The Impossibility of Religious Freedom”, 2017 online: The impossibility of Indigenous religious freedom (irpp.org)
[7] Ibid
[8] TRCtalk, supra note 1, Call to Action #60.
\
Recent Comments