|
By Lloyd Mackey
 THIS WEEK the Parliament of Canada is making fulsome apology to the First Nations people, and particularly to all those who were impacted by the residential school system.
As it happens, I will be listening to the apology on a car radio, probably on a freeway somewhere between Ottawa and Guelph.
Last week, I sat in on a significant preamble, for Christians at least, to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology speech. The occasion was the 134th general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
An important element of that assembly involved two events in which First Nations people interfaced with the mostly Caucasian commissioners, led by their newly-elected Korean-born moderator.
One of the high points, emotionally, was a moving exchange of hugs between the moderator, Cheol Soon Park, and the executive director of the Residential Schools Survivors Society, Ted Quewezance.
Presbyterians, along with their Catholic, Anglican and United brothers and sisters, have taken shared responsibility of the social, emotional and spiritual damage connected with the residential school system. That system, arguably with the best of intentions, seemed designed to culturally assimilate the aboriginal population. The communions listed above operated the schools for over 100 years, at the behest of the federal government.
That assimilation concept is a common theme in Canada's history, both with respect to its aboriginal and immigrant populations.
In the case of the residential schools, the assimilation question was wrapped in a bundle of competing interests. And, whatever those interests, they were made common by the fact that the dominant religious and political blocs were mainly rooted in French and British culture. Those groups were, of course, the earliest immigrants.
For the religious influences, the government's interests in assimilation were bolstered by the seeming opportunity to replace native spiritual values with institutional Christianity.
That is a short and somewhat clinical take on what turned out to be the seeming cultural genocide of large segments of the aboriginal population. And -- in due course -- the response was the push back of First Nations leadership and infrastructure that has most effectively brought the arguments against assimilation to bear.
So why was it that the hug between the residential school survivor and the Korean immigrant moderator so significant?
Briefly stated, it was because the Presbyterians, having dealt with their part in the assimilation issue with residential school survivors, have moved fairly quickly to extend significant autonomy to what is arguably the largest and most active non-British-rooted worshipping segment. The church set up regional bodies of Korean congregations, one Toronto-centred and the other on the west coast.
Continue article >>
|
These presbyteries provide cohesion for the Korean congregations, which, as it happens, are among the largest in the church. Their emphasis on prayer and the sharing of their faith, brought into the Canadian context from their homeland, has injected a reasonably-welcomed vigour into the denomination. Moderator Park's election symbolized all this and his term will likely include a fair number of opportunities to communicate Korean Christian spiritual values to the wider Presbyterian community -- and maybe beyond.
Christianity, as it happens, has grown at an exponential rate in Korea, particularly since the Korean War in the early '50s. Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist and Methodist communions have all exhibited this vigour.
The issue of First Nations assimilation is not, of course, completely parallel to that of the Korean immigrant. While having a deep and devoted commitment to the Creator, Native spirituality has grown out of a much different set of values than that of European Christianity. If there has been any sort of replacement with the institutionalized Christianity that seemed so conflicting for the children of the First Nations, it has come out of the many global aboriginal Christian links that have largely bypassed white culture.
For my own part, I was able to catch just a tiny glimpse of that network 19 years ago, when I had the opportunity of reporting on the Second Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, held in Manila. One of the main presentation tracks at that congress was on what might inadequately be described as the Christian aboriginal underground.
There are hints, every once in a while, of that aboriginal Christian network operating in Canada. Whatever else may be said, it seems to operate with much less antipathy toward Native spirituality than the earlier residential school mode of institutionalized Christianity.
But, for a non-aboriginal Christian journalist, it is extremely difficult to get the story. And I expect it will continue to be, until levels of trust can be built and First Nations Christians and their compatriots feel comfortable that assimilation will not, once again, become the order of the day.
* * *
By the way, the reason I am listening to the prime minister's apology on a car radio is that I am spending three days this week at Write! Canada, a conference for writers who are Christian, to be held in Guelph.
This conference, sponsored by The Word Guild, draws over 200 writers, in various stages of development, each June. More information about the The Word Guild and the conference is available here.
* * *
Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and the author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006). He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.
June 12/2008
|
