Our parish experience with the Kairos Blanket Exercise was formative, emotional and bridge building. While we as a parish had previously celebrated National Indigenous History Month and a couple of our members had participated in a previous Talking Circle held at the United Church, our knowledge of Indigenous history was not broad or deep.
Help from All My Relations and being able to secure funding from the Healing and Reconciliation Fund enabled us to invite the Circle of Turtle Lodge to our parish hall and open up the experience of the Kairos Blanket Exercise to our church community, to our ecumenical partners, our geographic community and our local Indigenous community.
The experience left no one untouched. While difficult at times, emotionally, the Circle of Turtle Lodge were extremely caring and supportive to us as a colonizer/settler community, many of whom had not heard Indigenous history before.
We are grateful for the funding from the Healing and Reconciliation Fund because it enabled us to learn more about the struggles and pain that our Indigenous brothers and sisters carry, to advertise and offer this experience to the broader community. More importantly, this experience has enabled us to forge ongoing ties with our local Indigenous network Dibaajimowin Pontiac. We will be hosting a Talking Circle in the next month or two either live or virtually and we fully expect this relationship to broaden and deepen with time.
We strongly encourage other parishes to avail themselves of the opportunities that the funding allows. We would not have been able to have this enriching experience without it.
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.”