Reflections transcripts:
Paul is not someone we usually think of as a multi-faith champion. Yet, in the passage from Acts, he stands among the people of Athens, looks around, takes in their spiritual life, and says, “I see how deeply you are seeking.” He recognizes that, even in ways different from his own, they are reaching toward the Holy. Before he speaks of Jesus, he affirms that God is already been present among them: “in God we live and move and have our being.”
It’s a moment which invites us into a posture of humility and openness. It reminds us that God’s Spirit is not limited to our own understanding, but is alive and active in many places, many cultures, and many ways of knowing.
Today, we will hear reflections from members of our community—stories of the ways Indigenous culture and spirituality have touched their lives and deepened their faith. In these stories, we catch glimpses of God’s presence at work—guiding, teaching, and calling us into deeper relationship with creation, with one another, and with the Sacred.
As we listen, I invite you to do so with an ear for celebration and appreciation. May we honor the wisdom and spiritual richness being shared, and may we be attentive to the ways God’s living Word continues to be spoken among us in the testimonies of our community.
We begin with a reflection from Janet Holland, but first, a prayer to lead us into this time—one Janet shared with me from the Very Rev. Stan McKay, former United Church Moderator and Indigenous Elder from Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba:
We come with thanksgiving
for our very breath, the warmth of sun, and the sustaining waters
for life all around us: the plants, soft grasses, and sheltering trees
for the ones that crawl, those that swim, and those that fly
for the four-legged and the two-legged
all our relations
We celebrate the diversity in creation as reflected in the four winds from the four directions.
We especially honour the many peoples with their many gifts for understanding
our shared life on the earth.
We strive to live out the seven sacred teachings:
Respect
Love
Honesty
Courage
Humility
Wisdom
Truth.
Rev. Joe Gaspar
Reflection: Janet Holland
The first time I attended an Indigenous/Settler circle at St Paul’s College at University of Waterloo was very much a learning experience for me. We sat in a circle; first, the smudging took place, then candles were lit, naming the seven sacred teachings; additional candles were left unlit. The leader began speaking, indicating the eagle feather, which she said would be passed around the circle; individuals could either speak when holding the feather or pass it to the next person. When the feather was passed to me, I gave a brief description of having worked in a residential school; when I finished telling my story, I asked if we could light one of the additional candles and name it “Reconciliation.” An Indigenous person stood to accompany me to the candles, and together we lit the candle, naming it “Reconciliation.” We walked around the circle together; returning to my seat, I passed the feather to the next person in the circle. Someone further around the circle congratulated me for my courage in sharing my story. It was an incredibly emotional experience. Participating in the circle is an exercise in respect: people only speak when holding the eagle feather.
After another circle ended, an Indigenous woman approached me and saying, “My heart was hardened towards you, but hearing your story my heart is now softened, and I ask forgiveness for hardening my heart towards you.” I was momentarily speechless, but quickly pulled myself together. Reaching my hands to hers, I said, “My heart reaches out to your heart in the hope we can move forward together.” It was another overwhelming experience. The same woman gave me a medicine pouch saying, “This will keep you safe from harm.”
Reflection: Sharon Conlon
I recently visited the Mohawk Residential school and Woodland Cultural Center. It brought forward emotions related to the behaviour of the Canadian people with whom I identify. As a child, my family carried a secret on my mother’s side. She had a distant grandfather who travelled up from the United States in the late 1800s to escape racism and to find work. He was from a western United States Indigenous nation called the Shoshone.
I don’t know much about our family history related to my Pepe Blais other than that we kept that part of our heritage a secret. It was not until six months before my grandmother passed that she admitted her great grandfather was Indigenous. It was my grandfather who told us his tribe and where he came from in the US to meet his bride. Their marriage gave hope and the secret began. Their descendants would not experience the suffering experienced by the Indigenous people in either country.
Attending the Woodland Cultural Center gave me perspective on the horrors inflicted on innocent children. I understand why it was so important to maintain our family secret and to protect our family. I am not proud of my story but understand the love necessary to deny yourself in order to protect your family. I am grateful to be a member of Parkminster Church, who work actively towards reconciliation and who show love in their works and prayers.
There has been guilt and shame in admitting being Canadian, the perpetrators of a cultural genocide and suppressing a rich personal history. Psalm 133:1 highlights the joy and goodness of harmonious living among God’s people. I pray to maintain that while living with biological and chosen family. There is still much to love in this world, and I hope my being here shares this love as I have known it.
Reflection: Roxy Linkletter
In the year 1968, I was looking for an adventure! Being a young person who felt a strong attraction to nature —the land, the sea and the forest — I answered an advertisement published by the United Church of Canada recruiting medical staff for hospitals in remote areas of Canada. I was assigned to the 27-bed hospital in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. Haida Gwaii is a group of islands located about 550 km northwest of Victoria, BC. I felt it was an amazing privilege to work in this hospital, which served the Haida people as well as fishers, loggers, and miners. There were opportunities to meet the people who had made the island’s history, and to explore this amazing piece of land, forests, and the north windswept pacific seacoast. Explore the island I did, on my 90-cc Honda dirt bike!
One of my memories was exploring a small island where the Indigenous people had lived, either seasonally or permanently. My companions and I were scratching around in the landscape and to our amazement we found glass beads, small blue beads and smaller ones that were red in color. Being curious and mischievous young people, we took some beads away with us knowing this action was not acceptable. The beads were given to the Haida people by English and American traders in the early 1700s in exchange for prime pelts of fur. I knew that any artifacts of the Indigenous culture — whether it was totem poles, beads, or regalia — were not to be removed from the islands.
For 57 years I have had these beads in my possession knowing I had illegally taken them from the land of the Haida people. In a recent conversation with a friend, I was excited to hear that she would be visiting Haida Gwaii. I rejoiced in this opportunity for me to return the beads to the land and people where they belong. My friend gladly consented to take the beads with her and return them to Haida Gwaii.
To conclude, I am so grateful for the hospitality of the Haida people in spite of my settler roots. I am so thankful that the beads will be returned to where they need to be. This act of reconciliation has encouraged me to support the Indigenous people in their journey and to further my journey towards reconciliation.
Reflection: Bethany McMullen
Daily affirmations: Every step you take is ceremony
On her first year on the Two Row, Rachel had affirmation cards that she let people she trusted and liked pick. If she felt they fit, she would let us keep them. I pulled “Every step you take is ceremony.” She looked at me, said, “Yeah, that sounds right,” and then walked away. We had spoken maybe once, for at most 3 minutes. I was confused.
I knew the idea of ceremony in Haudenosaunee context — Thanksgiving Address to begin and end, themes to mark the seasons, whatever happens in longhouse — and my Western view of ceremony: marriage, baptism, church services. Parliament. So how could every step I take “be ceremony”? People saw that I had been given one of these and asked what it said. When I told them, they nodded sagely and I still felt confused.
So I asked. I asked allies first: “I got this thing; I don’t get it? Am I missing something obvious?” These conversations were not as illuminating as I’d hoped, and the third person I spoke to suggested I speak to one of the Mohawk elders I knew. That conversation did help more and brought the idea that ceremony is life and life is ceremony. Thanks is given in part, nothing is certain, and that to remember all we have, because it all comes from Creator, is important in itself. I could understand this — it fit easily in my understanding of G*d and faith. Especially as someone who deals with mental health challenges, it is easy. It made sense, but it didn’t feel like it fit. I kept it with me. If nothing else, it was a good reminder that I could do something — that the push to do something was equally as important. Just as Jesus calls us to act for the less fortunate, so too I could make my actions — my steps — important. My actions were ceremony. Except that wasn’t the entire meaning of this quote. It took me a while to see this as less of a responsibility and more of a lifting of weight. I don’t have a lightning moment where I went from realizing that it wasn’t more pressure on me. Simply a reminder that being in the moment is as important as the future or the past, and then the realization that “each step is ceremony” wasn’t only about making each step a ceremony, but that existence was ceremony as well. There is something beautiful in the knowledge that one is sacred, and this shared knowledge.
Why I am responsible for reconciliation
It’s entirely possible this is not a common feeling, and it is likely tied to my age, but here is the reasoning for why I feel equally responsible for reconciliation, despite the fact that I have never been a part of a church that was actively engaged in residential schools. The last residential school closed when I was 1 year old; the church’s apology for their part in it has been part of the water that I swim in in church, so to speak. I am too young to be complicit in the atrocities that were committed in the name of my faith, yet I feel strongly that it is a part of the church’s history that I must continue the advocacy for justice.
My covenant with Gd on my confirmation was something that I chose, personally. I chose to step into this church as a full member, not through persuasion or through coercion, but by my own choice, which inherently means that I also take up the mantle of its history. Because it was of free will that I chose to become part of this community, it is my responsibility to hold all of it — its faults and its joys, its wins and losses. I believe in the power of the church to do great things, including, I hope, to move us to true reconciliation eventually, but equally I know that cannot come without an understanding of my religion’s place in the history of harm. It is similar to the conversations I put to people last year on Two Row while I wrestled with my calling (I’m still not ready to share that with the congregation). I ended up in a conversation with the (6? 8?) MSW students from the University of Waterloo, and shared that I was considering ministry. The conversation, as it always does when I mention I am a part of a church, went quiet. The assumption that a young person connected with a church is inherently evangelical (derogatory), fundamentalist, and/or conservative is a weight that I don’t know if we recognize how heavy it sits on our young people. I have lived both sides of this — one where after the “oh” and silence, I quickly run to fill it with affirmations — “It’s the one with the Pride flag”, “We advocated for gay marriage”, “We were one of the first churches to apologize for residential schools in the 80s” — and the times when I do not, and the frost it brings to new relationships. That day I had a different question for these future social workers: it is obvious that they care about bringing about reconciliation, but they too were entering a field that has a dark history with Indigenous Peoples, whose ability to do good has been weaponized to continue the same harms the church started. So, I asked them: “Obviously you have decided that the history of the harm caused by the profession doesn’t eliminate the good you think that you could do in it, so how do you manage that contradiction?”
The trick was to listen, and to know what has happened, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Don’t know why, but often hymns come to me during the trip out of nowhere and I can’t stop humming them. Last year was “Song of Praise to the Maker”. The Bum-ble-bees hum along! Can’t remember the other years’ — it’s usually after the Ox-bow, where it’s a full day of paddling with almost no current, no lunch break on land, and a drive to Mohawk Memorial Park (and Woodland Cultural Centre) afterwards. I think it’s a hymn that has the ability to bridge both understandings of the world — Turtle Island and North America.
Reflection: Wendy Rudd
I have been learning about Indigenous beliefs for personal reasons and for work. One experience I had was years ago when I was working for the GRCA, we used to host Laurier students and high school students from the north for a sacred fire ceremony.
The high school students were down to experience university and some to write their literacy test. I spoke with the teachers and students while we waited for the elders, and when they arrived, the elders took the young men to get the fire started. The men are the fire keepers, so only men were allowed to build the fire and put wood on the fire. Nothing gets my back up more then being told I cannot do something because I am female.
Later during the ceremony the female elder (I wish I could remember who) said women were the water keepers. This was years before I learned of the Water Walkers. She then did a teaching about Fire and Water and how too much of either one was destructive, even in the home, if there was too much fire (read: too much power being held by the man) there would be destruction and the water, i.e. the woman would be put out. If there was too much water, the fire (man) would go out, i.e. lose his power to keep his family safe. Both were equally important. This teaching helped me to understand why the gender roles existed.
Another teaching that changed my life happened at Crow Shield Lodge a few years ago. I had Shadow and Sky with me and they were still in high school. Clarence Cachagee was teaching and we were in the long house on the property. He was teaching us about the door facing east where our souls entered and then he mentioned the 4 poles which represented the four stages of life before souls exited towards the west.
He said sometimes people got stuck at certain stages. But when he spoke about the last stage, elderhood, I felt this pull there. My heart said this is where I am, I am ready to move past the adulthood rule. I think this is why I love being a grandmother, and why when we found out about Macklin I was ready. Some of my friends are told me there was no way they wanted to be grandparents at 53 but I am.
Reflection: Lisa Hicknell
My most impactful experience of Indigenous Culture and Spirituality connects to the land and how whenever I’m immersed in Indigenous learning opportunities or ceremony, the Creator shows up in a physical form.
This first happened several years ago when I had the opportunity to attend an Elders Gathering hosted by the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Education Association of Ontario. We were at a YMCA camp near Schomberg outside on a chilly day for a Sunrise ceremony. As the Elders began speaking, an Eagle started circling overhead. I’d lived in Ontario my entire life and NEVER seen an Eagle. And yet, as Elders share their knowledge, the animal known for soaring so high they can carry prayers for the Creator just happened to show up at that time, at that moment. And as though scripted for a movie, then a rainbow appeared. I was moved to tears at the beauty of this moment. How could anyone deny the Creator’s presence at this time and in this place. (as this was during ceremony I did not take photos)
Since that time, I’ve noticed a pattern of this happening. The Eagles show up, the clouds part and the sun shines through, the northern lights appear. Creator reminds me that she is present in these moments. I travelled to Mission, BC in the summer of 2023 to help Abbie choose a wedding gown. Abbie’s now wife, Shaneal, is a member of Sts’ailes (Chehalis) First Nation, and we spent much of our time together on or around her nation’s territory. Shaneal’s brother had been tragically killed nearly a year earlier when the truck he and three fellow Wildfire fighters collided with a semi-truck. Shaneal took Abbie, Poppy, and myself to a place on her First Nation that she and her brother enjoyed visiting. As Shaneal told us stories about her and Blaine in their younger years, two eagles showed up overhead. Shaneal looked up and casually said, oh, there’s Blaine.
When Abbie and Shaneal got married in 2024 in Abbotsford, BC, I was overcome with the presence of the Creator. The day before the wedding I was standing on the deck of our Airbnb and looked out over the water to see five or six bald eagles circling above. I’d never seen one bald eagle other than in a zoo, and here I was surrounded by them. Late into the night that same day, the phone rang next to me as I was fast asleep. It was the owner of the Airbnb who told me I had to go outside right away. First I scolded him for interrupting our sleep the night before such an important day and was set to try to go back to sleep, but I felt the pull to go outdoors. What I saw when I looked in the sky again, brought me to tears. The Creator had painted the sky in a way I had never witnessed before. Now I know that in most Indigenous cultures the Northern Lights are traditionally a warning sign, but to me they were our ancestors, including my Grandma and Shaneal’s brother
who we were very much missing at this event, telling us they were with us alongside the Creator.
These experiences have taught me to slow down and notice the Creator’s presence all around. Instead of rushing through the beauty of creation on my way to the next “thing,” I look and listen and appreciate the awe that is all around. And last week when a beautiful male cardinal just landed on the road in front of us, not afraid at all of me or the dog, my response was simply, “Hi Dad.”
Reflection: Deb Siertsema
I have been struggling to find the most spiritual time of the time that I worked with Indigenous ministries with the United Church of Canada. There were so many times, so many sunrise services or smudging sessions. They were just so peaceful and so connected with the Earth and with each other.
They were amazing, but then there were also times when I started to notice connections. The connections such as the events happening that were scheduled to be in the pouring rain, but the rain would stop just at the moment we were to go outside for the service or event. This was not a shifting of the rain but a drastic stop and start of a deluge of rain.
There was then a time when I was on a hike and there was a deer just standing off the trail, staring at us. It felt like a divine presence. There was just an awareness that was heightened by the Indigenous spiritual practices.
It provided a deep connection with all that is around and part of our connection to the earth and with each other. I often think of when former Moderator Stan McKay would pray and his last word would be “soeniminon” but that it meant All My Relations. Rather than Amen he would state “so-eniminon” and mentally I would say All My Relations.