The silence of falling snow

By David Ball
SCM General Secretary

Today is my second day of a peacemaker delegation on Aboriginal Justice with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), and I’ve been thinking a lot about my friends and my involvement in the SCM. Most importantly, I’m looking for ways the SCM can be connected and involved, not only with CPT but with Indigenous communities.

In Kenora, Ontario, we spent our last night and day in First Baptist Church. I slept in the nursery, full of anticipation of what this experience in Grassy Narrows First Nation and Kenora will bring. When I awoke, the snow was tumbling in moist clumps as big as a coin, covering my car and the streets outside. It had that heavy silence that comes with a thick snowfall – comfortable and warm, but at times eerie and disturbing.

We spent the early morning in an ‘Undoing Colonialism’ workshop, led by Christian Peacemaker Teams members, and also looked at some of the barriers and aids to inter-cultural communication with Anishnaabe Indigenous people who we will be interacting with during the next two weeks.

We then continued our anti-racism exploration with a very intense and challenging workshop with facilitator named Kaaren, from Trout Lake First Nation four hours north-east of here. It was a really important, and intense, emotional experience – to name again how racism hurts people so deeply in this society, and as a result white people are also trapped in a system of white privilege and white supremacy even if we suffer to different degrees.

I really wish we could have Kaaren come to an SCM conference to share her incredible skills and questions with us. She shared the sacred cleansing smudging ceremony with us, as well as teachings on the medicine wheel, and we used that traditional system to reflect on our responsibilities, rights, reciprocity and relations with Indigenous peoples.

I have facilitated antiracism workshops years ago, and yet it all challenged me again to reflect on whether I am, as a white person living in a colonial country, really living out the call to be accountable. What does it mean to be accountable? How does this relate to my politics? My faith? My personal relationships?

As I watch the thick snow falling outside, I hope to break some of the silences in my life, to do so gracefully and with a sense of humour. Why have I been silent on racism? Why have I come to accept racist jokes and comments in order to keep the peace in my circles? And what does it mean to be a real ally to non-white people, and especially Indigenous peoples who are among the most silenced and marginalized in our context?

I feel so blessed to be here, and thank the SCM for enabling that to happen.