Further thoughts on National Truth and Reconciliation Day

After feeling so frustrated with my church on Sunday because there was no mention of National Truth and Reconciliation Day, I attended a special Truth and Reconciliation Day mass at Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples with Lee on Monday morning. It was a beautiful service with singing that raised the roof at times, and I was very happy to be there.

But as the presider noted, Truth and Reconciliation Day should be more than a day -- it should be every day of the year. When I got home, I looked in my September missalette a second time to determine whether I had missed any prayers or mention of care for First Peoples in its pages, other than the somewhat offensive reference to Jean Brebeuf and Companions' response to the call for "missionaries to the Indians" -- in other words, the earliest attempts to colonize Indigenous people away from their own understanding of Creator toward Eurocentric thinking. That was the only mention of anything to do with Indigenous People in the entire September booklet.

So today I am writing a letter to the company who puts out the missalette, as well as to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. I want to remind them all that one morning's prayers in one church in my city is not an adequate effort toward Truth and Reconciliation from a church that was so much a part of Residential Schools and the resulting intergenerational trauma they left as a horrifying legacy of colonialism. We should be praying for and participating in the healing of these wounds on a regular basis. 

And to have an entire September missalette that doesn't acknowledge Truth and Reconcilation Day? That needs to be fixed!

Enough about my frustrations. I also want to share good writings about Truth and Reconciliation by some young folks who work for the Council of Canadians, a social-justice oriented organization here. They ask us to rethink our own ideas about important issues, and though that's never comfortable, it is essential if we really want the world to heal. Click the links below to read some excellent and thought-provoking stuff... and see what else you can learn in this Reconciliation week.

Every Child Matters, Not Just the Ones in Orange by Eagleclaw Thom

Truth, Reconciliation and the Violence that Never Stopped by Christina Kruszewski