Brian's Blog

Well the blanket exercise went well in worship last week and we all got a small taste of the experiences Indigenous people have faced in the last 150 years.  We recognize that becoming educated about Indigenous experience is a step in reconciliation but action needs to be a second step.  I imagine that such action involves at least three steps: a survey of our own attitudes; an attempt to meet and genuinely know Indigenous persons; and participation in institutional change wherever possible.  I received an email from Bonnie in which she was connect concern with needed action and I am posting it below (with her permission) for your information.

When Crown land is sold we extinguish Indigenous rights. Put in the context of the Blanket Exercise our provincial government continues to yank away blankets. How can we voice our opposition? A resolution to Presbytery? Letter writing campaign?

Copied below is a link to Trevor Herriot’s blogspot:

http://trevorherriot.blogspot.ca

see Oct 16,2017 grass notes

I have also copied below the final paragraphs. Please feel free to share and consider a response to this bewildering situation.

Thanks, Bonnie

Our Crown lands—already so scarce in the south because 85% of the land has been privatized—are the last shadows of the prairies we were entrusted to share and protect together under treaty,

 the closest thing we have to land held in common for the benefit of all treaty people. 

If we stand by and let this government sell them off, we will be abandoning any possible renewal of the spirit in which the treaties were signed, and inviting a new form of colonization 

taking us even further from any legitimate social contract with the land and its first peoples.