“We could never be Christians”, was stated by a First Nations Elder during a panel discussion at the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education. This Elder is definitely justified in his perspective. There was an immense amount of injustice done on behalf of the church and the government, working together, to colonize First Nation’s land and assimilate the First Nation’s people who inhabited it. It will never be forgotten. Writing this post has been a process. After some personal reflection; analyzing my own biases, and reaching out to First Nation’s Elders for more guidance, I finally got the courage to share this with you. I gained clarity and confidence to proceed in writing about this topic after speaking with an Elder who has been in residential school herself and is a Christian.

Residential schools were run by the government but they were also run by religious institutions, in fact, they actually believed that they were doing a good thing. However, they were disabling the freedom of another, which is undeniably wrong. Due to this, and the intergenerational trauma that followed, many people think that if you are Indigenous, you cannot be a Christian. However, a change of heart when it comes to how Christianity is perceived, is necessary, if we desire to see true reconciliation continue to come to fruition.

“I don’t think that it’s true. You can still believe in Jesus. He didn’t come to divide or separate, its people who did that.” These are not my words, but the words of an Indigenous Elder and these words are truth, and they are powerful. If an individual is truly connected to Creator, they know His character and they know to be a Christian, means to have a relationship with Jesus, not to be religious or condemn other people. It is not a Christian value to steal away children, and commit cultural genocide. Many people within religious institutions take scripture out of context. It is the people who make it corrupt, the belief itself is not. Creator has been on this land far before we were, and I think it is important that we acknowledge this. Let’s, “seek to understand in the same way that we want to be understood” (Thank you, Brene Brown, for that gold nugget).

I think that reconciliation needs to start within the individual person first, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, extending to their family, and their community as a whole, all intertwined with healing and forgiveness. Everyone’s healing journey is different but I think if we are patient with one another, and strive to understand one another, true connection and reconciliation can flourish and continue into the future. One of the highest forms of understanding is empathy; the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, listen to them, and see the world through their eyes. It is also important to know that there is a strong distinction between what it means to be religious and what it means to be spiritual. To understand this, you must be willing to step outside of yourself and what you have come to know up until this point in your life and listen to someone else’s story, someone else’s healing journey.