In many Canadian churches today, it is common to hear a land acknowledgement at the start of a service. It’s a way for them to recognize the First Nations who first occupied the land.
Such acknowledgements are good things, said Adrian Jacobs, senior leader for Indigenous Justice and Reconciliation in the Christian Reform Church in Canada. But they don’t go far enough.
Along with acknowledging the original occupants, churches should consider paying reparations, he said — a symbolic amount donated to Indigenous-led organizations in their communities.
“It would be a spiritual covenant with local Indigenous people, a treaty between people with respect to the land,” Jacobs said.
In calling churches to consider such a covenant, Jacobs said they could participate by donating one per cent of their budget, or of the value of their property, annually. At the same time, they could build relationships with Indigenous people in their community.
“They could learn what their issues are, sit together, eat together, laugh, cry and dance together,” said Jacobs, a member of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy of the Grand River Territory in Ontario.
Churches are well suited when it comes to reparations since they are “supposed to be the conscience of the country,” he said. “They can lead the way.”
So far, only four Canadian churches have taken up his call, all of them Mennonite. “Mennonite churches have been the most responsive,” Jacobs said.
At Home Street Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, the congregation has decided to give one per cent of its budget, $3,600, to two local Indigenous organizations.
The decision came after about three years of discussion, said Esther Epp-Tiessen, part of that church’s Indigenous-settler relations committee.
For Epp-Tiessen, the story of how the church decided to pay reparations is placed in the larger context of “settler colonialism, including the theft and dispossession of Indigenous land and the near-erasure of Indigenous people from that land.”
By paying a reparation, the church — which was built in 1920 on land once owned by a Métis family — seeks to acknowledge this context in a tangible way, she said.
The money will be given to two Indigenous-led organizations. “They are groups we have a relationship with,” said Epp-Tiessen. “They are doing marvelous work in the community.”
For the church, “this isn’t about a charitable donation from our benevolence,” she added. “It’s a powerful symbol of a commitment to be treaty people. It is money that is owing.”
Another Winnipeg congregation making reparations is Charleswood Mennonite Church.
That church, located in the southwest part of the city, is located on land that was once used by the Metis and Anishinaabe and Swampy Cree people for hunting and trapping. Under the terms of the treaty, it was assumed the land would be shared by settlers and Indigenous people.
After the church adopted a statement of reconciliation with Indigenous people in 2021, the congregation decided they wanted to act on it, said co-pastor Jonathan Neufeld.
“We decided to give one per cent of our annual budget to Indigenous organizations, in an open-handed way,” he said. “No strings attached.”
The church decided to give half of its $3,600 in reparations to an Indigenous women-led organization that supports women and the other half to the Share the Gifts Reparations Fund, which collects money from churches, organizations and individuals to support Indigenous-led groups.
For the church, it’s a way to go beyond a land acknowledgement by “tangibly showing we have benefitted from this land as a church and individuals,” Neufeld said, noting the church is in just its second year of paying reparations.
“We’re proceeding courageously and incrementally, but we see the potential,” he added.
Also in Winnipeg, since 2022 Hope Mennonite Church has been donating one per cent of the value of its property, about $2,500, to local Indigenous organizations.
“We realize that reparations are something that we should and need to do,” said lead pastor Lynell Bergen.
In Kitchener, Ont., Stirling Mennonite Church has been paying one per cent of their annual budget, or about $4,000, since 2021.
“We had been talking about it for many years,” said Josie Winterfeld, pastor for missions, peace and justice and outreach. “We’ve been learning, growing and working into it.”
The church is located on Block Two of the Haldimand Tract, which includes the land 9.7 kilometres on either side of the Grand River from Dundalk, Ontario to Lake Erie.
When proclaimed in 1874, Indigenous people who were part of Six Nations were told they would receive lease payments from those who came to reside on the land. That never happened.
For the church, that history helped inspire their decision to understand what it meant to explore “right relations” with their Indigenous neighbours.
“We looked at the treaty, all the things that were forgotten,” Winterfield said.
The donation from the church is given to the Six Nations Polytechnic in Brantford, a postsecondary organization that seeks to preserve and promote Indigenous knowledge.
The payment is symbolic, she said, noting “it doesn’t come close to what they lost. It’s about learning to live in a good way with Indigenous neighbours.”
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