Church apologies are important steps in right direction

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/08/2023 (1113 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In July, I was able to be part of a tour commemorating history. I didn’t expect to see history made at the same time.

It happened on July 24 in Abbotsford, B.C., the last stop on the Memories of Migration: Russlaender 100 Tour, a tour to remember how 21,000 Mennonites came to Canada from the Soviet Union between 1923-30.

That’s where Richard Thiessen, president of the Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia, apologized on behalf of the Society and Mennonites in that province to representatives of the Semá:th First Nation (also known as the Sumas First Nation) near Abbotsford, for how they had suffered due to the draining of Sumas Lake.

In the apology, made in a traditional long house at the First Nation, Thiessen acknowledged how some of the Mennonite immigrants who arrived in B.C.’s Fraser Valley a century ago were able to take advantage of the draining of that lake — a lake that had been a resource and source of life for the First Nation for generations.

The lake was emptied by the B.C. government in the early 1920s to create fertile farmland for the new arrivals. It was seen as “positive opportunity” by those Mennonite immigrants, Thiessen said, but it was “nothing like that for your people.”

In fact, it had “a devastating impact on your people. You were displaced from your dwellings, and your traditional fishing and hunting grounds were taken from you. In so many ways, your lives were changed forever,” he said.

On behalf of those who “care about our Mennonite story,” Thiessen said he was sorry “that our mothers and fathers didn’t see you when they settled here 100 years ago” and “for the role our settler ancestors played in this devastating chapter of your lives.”

In response, Dalton Silver, chief of the Semá:th First Nation, accepted the apology and said it was “a step in the right direction.”

Silver added he hoped the apology would be the “start of a new journey of friendship and reconciliation together.”

The apology by the Historical Society is the latest in the line of expressions of regret and requests for forgiveness made by Canadian churches and church-related groups to Indigenous people.

The first apology appears to have been made by the United Church in 1986. Presented by the church’s General Council in Sudbury to elders from across Canada, it expressed regret for how that church, in its “zeal to tell you of the good news of Jesus Christ,” ignored the value of Indigenous spirituality.

It went on to ask forgiveness for confusing “western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the gospel of Christ” and for imposing “our civilization as a condition for accepting the gospel.”

The next apology was made by the Roman Catholic Oblates in 1991, when they apologized for their role in residential schools. This included apologizing for “the part we played in the cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious imperialism” against Indigenous people.

In 1993 Primate Archbishop Michael Peers apologized on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, saying he was “sorry, more than I can say,” for taking children from their families to residential schools, for “trying to remake you in our image,” and for the abuse many suffered in the schools.

In 2019, Canadian Anglicans followed up an apology for causing spiritual harm to Indigenous people. They also passed a motion that year to designate August 6, the date of the 1993 apology, a special day in the Church’s liturgical calendar.

And in 2022 Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the worldwide Anglican Church, came to Canada to apologize for the Church of England’s legacy of colonialism and the harm done to Indigenous peoples.

In 2021, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops apologized on behalf of the whole church in Canada. And last year Pope Francis himself came to Canada to apologize on behalf of the worldwide Catholic Church.

Mennonites apologized in 2014 when leaders from various Canadian Mennonite denominations acknowledged Indigenous people had experienced “much hurt and much suffering” due to residential schools and other abuses.

“We regret our part in the assimilation practice that took away language use and cultural practice, separating child from parent, parent from child, and Indigenous peoples from their culture,” the Mennonite leaders said, adding they regretted how “the Christian faith was used, wrongly, as an instrument of power, not as an invitation to see how God was already at work before we came.”

They closed by saying “we commit ourselves to walk with you, listening and learning together as we journey to a healthier and more just tomorrow.”

Apologies like these, along with others, are important. But as Silver, Chief of the Semá:th First Nation noted, they are just steps in the right direction, not an arrival at the destination. For that, there’s much more work to do.

Or, as the Anglican Church put it recently: “Today, the journey of reconciliation continues — through listening, truth-telling, repentance, and healing with Indigenous peoples, both within and beyond the Church.”

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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