Thanks Jer, grateful to be in this space together

Thanks for your comments Bridget. Very cool that you spent time here on the Island! Were was the Koksilah Festival held (Cowichan)? Where about in the UK are you now? Before moving back to the Comox Valley, I spent 4 and a half years on the North Island (Port Hardy, Port Alice, Quatsino and Ft. Rupert). It really has shaped me in so many ways. Our church ran St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay. Most of the Elders I met attended that school (which wasn’t a school). A few years ago our previous bishop walked from Alert Bay to the cathedral in Victoria during Lent (the Sacred Journey). Our diocese has embarked on a new vision to re-enter the land and seek a better relationship with the First Peoples here (a relationship based on respect, listening, and justice). It’s a long journey for sure and yes, it’s one of the central questions that I’m holding in this program.

Hearing the words Gilakas’la is like coming home to me. I lived in the Comox Valley and then on Cortes Island for two years before moving back to the UK. I found the conversation around reconciliation, decolonisation and reparation in Canada to be ahead of us here in the UK because we are not confronted by the injustice every day in the same way. Like you say, homelessness is a huge issue in NA and the faces on the streets tell the story of unjust histories and ongoing displacement and dislocation. Although here in the UK we are complicit and have benefitted as much if not more so from colonial expansion as white settlers in colonial nations, it is out of sight out of mind and there is not the same urgency to address injustice.

I am curious about the role of the church specifically in reconciliation and healing in Canada, is that one of the questions you are exploring on this journey? I attended the Koksilah Festival a couple of years ago and the venue had a chapel and old residential school which is known to have abused and hurt indigenous children. Just being there, taking over the space, sharing a table with so many strangers across different cultures, celebrating and centering songs and dance that had been oppressed and silenced for so many years, DJing and dancing in the chapel itself felt like reconciliation, felt like healing. It felt like a reclaiming and redistribution of power and resources. At the same time I try to hold the ‘not-enough’-ness of the action needed in our broken but beautiful world, but like you say, I am keen to listen to Elders to find the way…