SCM Canada will join the Pilgrimage for Indigenous Rights this spring (April 23 – May 14), being organised by the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity project of Christian Peacemaker Teams, and the Indigenous-Settler Relations of Mennonite Church Canada.

We are excited and humbled by the opportunity to join this pilgrimage and support the necessary and timely conversation about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). We seek to learn, to act in solidarity, and to witness to the need for action following the direction of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report.

A small group of people cross the snow-shrouded prairie
In March 2015, SCMers from Winnipeg Treaty 1 territory joined those walking from Stoney Knoll, SK to Edmonton, AB to honour residential school survivors.

SCM members and Local Units will be encouraged to consider how they can participate – by walking for part of the Pilgrimage, supporting the walkers, or learning more about the issues and sharing that knowledge in their own context.

  • We believe that the everyday operations of the Canadian state violate the inherent and treaty rights of Indigenous nations.
  • We believe that as people on this land, (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) we have an obligation to respond to these injustices.
  • We believe that Indigenous rights are human rights, including those recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
  • We believe that Canada’s endorsement of UNDRIP remains a symbolic gesture when it is not fully implemented.
  • We believe that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call to action #48, addressed to churches and faith communities, requires us to explore, understand, and animate UNDRIP.
  • We believe that concepts of ‘right relations’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘decolonization’ can only be realised through careful listening, diligent study, patient work and contemplative action. We are called into this work, and the Pilgrimage for Indigenous Rights is an important way to engage.

We pray together:

“As guests on this land, we give deep thanks.
We are blessed with the opportunity
to work towards right relations,
to resist all that threatens Creation,
to confront injustice, privilege and empire,
to pray and live our way into the kingdom of God,
and to learn graceful ways of living on this Earth.”

 

For more about the SCM’s history and commitment to Indigenous Solidarity, read here.