Indigenous leader critical of MC Canada decision
One of the co-founders of the grassroots Indigenous-led movement Idle No More says her trust in the Mennonite church has been shaken by Mennonite Church Canada’s recent decision to reduce its Indigenous-Settler Relations (ISR) position from full-time to half-time. Sylvia McAdam (Saysewahum) is a law professor at the University of Windsor who is from the…
Leonard Doell receives lifetime achievement award
A Saskatchewan man was recently recognized for his decades-long work in peacemaking and community building, especially between Mennonite settlers and Indigenous Peoples. Leonard Doell was honoured with the 2022 Global Citizen Lifetime Achievement Award from the Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation. The council’s mission is to “build momentum towards a just, equitable and sustainable world…
Watch: Steve Bell’s Freedom Road update
“It’s a pretty good story,” Steve Bell says in a new video. That’s an understatement. In the 12-minute video, published on Bell’s YouTube page earlier this month, the Winnipeg singer-songwriter gives viewers an update on Freedom Road—the 24-km., all-season road that links the once-isolated Shoal Lake 40 First Nation to the Trans-Canada Highway. Shoal Lake…
MC B.C. posts land acknowledgment
In the spirit of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples of British Columbia, a statement of land acknowledgment has been adopted by Mennonite Church British Columbia. It states: “We respectfully and gratefully acknowledge that we gather on the unceded, traditional and ancestral lands of Indigenous First Nations.” Earlier this year, the MC B.C. Indigenous Relations Task Group…
Indigenous elder leads series on history, reconciliation
This fall, a collective of people in southern Manitoba working at Indigenous-settler reconciliation, called the Truth and Action Working Group, is hosting a series of talks with David Scott, an elder and policy advisor from Swan Lake First Nation. The group is made up primarily of people from a handful of churches in the Morden-Winkler…
Protesting pipelines in British Columbia
Mennonite Church B.C.’s Indigenous Relations Task Group, which is committed to creating redemptive relationships between settler Mennonites and their Indigenous neighbours, has officially registered its opposition to the Canadian Government’s support for two projects: the Coastal GasLink Pipeline bringing fracked gas from the Peace River to Kitimat, B.C.; and the Trans Mountain Pipeline bringing bitumen…
MC Canada issues National Day for Truth and Reconciliation statement
In advance of Canada’s first-ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation tomorrow (Sept. 30), Mennonite Church Canada is reminding the nationwide church about Mennonite involvement in Indian Residential Schools, and asking people to take steps toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Previously known as Orange Shirt Day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is an opportunity…
MDS Canada, MCC complete office renovation project in Timmins
In light of the news about the unmarked graves of children at former residential schools in B.C., Saskatchewan and other parts of the country, the work of Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) Canada at the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Indigenous Neighbours office in Timmins, Ont., took on new resonance for volunteers. The project to renovate and…
Lament and love
Once again news headlines are about how the church has failed. News about residential schools fill our newsfeeds, schools generally run by churches and funded by the government, with decades of separating families and leaving wounds of trauma for seven generations. Mennonites want to know, “Were we involved?” (See 2010 CM article online at https://bit.ly/3gjm2uL.)…
MC Canada, ecumenical groups mobilize around Bill C-15
“I don’t think that anybody can relax until we actually hear the words ‘royal assent.’ I think we have to be all over this,” says Jennifer Preston, general secretary for Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC), the peace and social justice agency of Quakers in Canada. Preston is referring to Bill C-15, “An Act respecting…
