Thoughts on Reconciliation

There's a spot I like to go to that makes me feel connected to the land around me and to God. It's by some trees on a low ridge overlooking an open field with the hills of the Manitoba Escarpment visible a couple of miles to the south. It's not breathtaking scenery but when I stand there with the trees behind me and the sky above me and the land in front of me stretching away to the hills, I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time. I go there to think about life, the world, and everything. In my experience, going to that spot helps the big picture appear more clearly. Over the years I've stood there with my wife, each of my kids, with my father and when I was small with my grandfather.

This morning as I stood in that spot looking out over the land I thought about all the people who have ever stood right there feeling like they were at the right place at the right time. It would not be a large group of people – the location isn't famous or spectacular or strategic and for a long time, it was at the bottom of a lake. My kids, my dad and my grandpa would be there. There would be some Morrises, and the Kemps who took out the homestead, along with a few others in between. Before that maybe some railway construction workers. I don't think there was much fur trading in the area so before the railroad, there would be people from the various local First Nations going about their business. There are hawthorne bushes that grow there with chokecherries and saskatoons nearby. Animals of all sorts move along the flats below the hills. I've heard that at one time there was a trail along the base of the hills that connected the Red River Valley to the east where there were Cree speaking people and the lakes to the north where there were Ojibwe speaking folks and the high plains to the west with communities of Dakota people who lived there. Any of those people could duck off the trail a short distance and rest on this sandy ridge with fruit, hunting, water, wood, and open country all close by. Before that time it was the bottom of a glacial lake and as far as I know before the lake there were no people on the land in this area.

What would we say, that group of maybe thirty or forty in total, if we could talk together? We would not be the wealthiest and most powerful people in our societies – they gather in more famous scenic and strategically important locations. We might feel like little people doing the best we could. Each of us might feel glad to be part of our time and place in some ways but not others. We might be both proud of our societies and embarrassed by them at the same time. This particular piece of land has never been considered worth either invading or defending so there would not likely be fighting. On the other hand, each of us would hold some of the assumptions and stereotypes common to our culture and we might be reluctant to talk to each other.

Would there be reconciliation between us? Each person who has stood in that spot in the past has had the times turn against them and they needed to move away. In the same way, someday my family and I won't be here anymore. Whether we feel connected to those actions or not, the settler communities made it difficult for the indigenous people who came before to carry on and they moved away. Do we bear responsibility for the actions of those who created the opportunities that we took advantage of in later years? Would the Morrisses be angry with the Thiessens and the Kemps angry with the Morrisses and perhaps a Dakota family angry with the Kemps and some Cree people angry with the Dakota and so on back into the dawn of time? Or would we be willing to make space for each other, including the things that each of us should not have done? Would I learn from the mistakes already made by others or would I repeat them? Would I be willing to share the spot with others in the first place?

Today is a day set aside to make reconciliation with First Nations folks a priority. Reconciliation is also right up there on my to-do list as a Christian person according to 2 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 2 and elsewhere in scripture. Do I have the relationship-building tools or even the words and intentions for that task? What if the task of reconciliation has been made impossibly difficult by people claiming to act in the name of Christ? Sometimes it seems like it might be simpler and less stressful to skip the reconciliation, pretend nothing ever happened, and ignore everyone.

I don't know how to answer these questions and I don't know what the solutions are to the problems that prevent our reconciliation with one another and with God. But when I stand with the trees behind me and the sky above me and the open land rising to the hills in the south I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time. I am confident that a small group of people, some of us from settler traditions and some from First Nations has stood in the same spot and felt the same way in a tradition that steps back from one to the next as long as there have been people here at all. That gets me pointed back in the right direction and makes it possible to take a step.