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…
Indigenous relations work revamped and reduced
The governing body of Mennonite Church Canada has decided to end the full-time Indigenous-Settler Relations (ISR) position held by Steve Heinrichs and replace it with a new half-time position. Heinrichs’s 10-plus notable years with MC Canada are over. At the same time, MC Canada will add a half-time climate action position and a half-time associate…
Heinrichs launches online book club
Mennonite Church Canada’s Indigenous-Settler Relations program is running a five-week online book club beginning this April. The chosen text is Beloved Amazonia, a courageous collection of documents from the Pan-Amazon Synod, including an “apostolic exhortation” to the church from Pope Francis. “Carrying the wisdom cultivated from consultations with more than 80,000 people in the Amazon,…
Public invited to explore ‘Unsettling the Word’
Anyone looking to explore the Mennonite Church Canada publication Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization in a group setting has an opportunity to do so in the coming month. New Leaf Network, an organization that provides support to church workers nationwide, is hosting a virtual book club during which participants will read through the…
‘We are in this together’
In 1990, as the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival on this side of the Atlantic loomed, Mennonites felt compelled to do something tangible. The Conference of Mennonites in Canada (CMC) formally resolved to work with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), which was already exploring the establishment of a Jubilee Fund. The intent of the fund was,…
Not so radical after all
While people across Canada and around the world self-isolate from COVID-19, work continues on the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline in northern British Columbia, without the full consent of the Wet’suwet’en people. The 670-kilometre long pipeline plans to snake through Wet’suwet’en territory and export liquefied natural gas around the world. Steve Heinrichs, director of Indigenous-Settler Relations…
