Tag Archives: Truth and Reconciliation

Let’s all blame Donald Trump for everything

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I am anticipating a deluge of liberal blame, a tsunami of censure to be launched at Donald Trump when he takes office in January. We can expect him to be the cause of everything from the weather being too hot – or too cold – to rising sea levels – or falling sea levels – to plagues of locusts, frogs, flies, boils…. and so on.

Canada, in the shape of Senator Murray Sinclair, is getting an early start by blaming Trump for holding up reconciliation efforts with Aboriginals in Canada. The Anglican Journal, exercising its prophetic voice with suppressed glee, reports on it here:

Senator Murray Sinclair, who was chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), praised the Anglican Church of Canada for it efforts to further reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, but says more needs to be done.

There are “forces at play” in the world that are pushing back against such efforts, Sinclair told guests at the Cathedral Arts Dinner Lecture Series, held at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa November 14. He referred to the recent election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the June 23 vote by Britain to leave the European Union and to “other places that have elected similar kinds of leaders.”

Anglican Church of Canada participates in Truth and Reconciliation

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From here:

From March 27 to 30, several thousand Indigenous and non-Indigenous people will gather in Edmonton, Alberta for the seventh and final national Truth and Reconciliation Commission event.

The Anglican delegation will include Archbishop Fred Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald, the Venerable Michael Thompson, General Secretary, and Archbishop Terry Finlay, Primate’s Envoy on Residential Schools.

Bishops, clergy, and parishioners from the dioceses of Edmonton, Athabasca, and Calgary will also be present for TRC events including the lighting of the sacred fire, statement giving by residential school survivors, church listening circles, and a public Anglican expression of reconciliation.

The purpose of the Sacred Fire is:

The Lighting of the Sacred Fire happens before we begin each National Event to ensure that the Spirits and the Teachings guide and protect us while the Commission does its work.

And:

The fire is generally started during the first part of opening ceremony after sacred space has been set. The Fire Keeper quietly calls in the powers of the directions as well as the fire powers when the Sacred Fire is first lit.

The most curious thing that strikes me about the Church’s attempts to atone for thrusting Western religion and cultural values on Indigenous North Americans is its eagerness to now do the opposite: displace Christianity with Indigenous Animist practices. The Church seems to be saying: “we were wrong all along and to prove it we will adopt your religious beliefs in favour of our own.”

I have a suspicion that this would not be happening if the church did not secretly think that any belief system is just about as good as any other. If Anglican Church of Canada clergy truly wanted to provide compensation for those their predecessors abused, they could sell their church buildings – many of which are almost empty – and donate the proceeds to the ex-inmates of the much loathed Residential Schools. A lot more practical than a “full-colour historical timeline of evolving relations between Indigenous peoples and the Anglican Church of Canada.”