Federal budget a step toward Indigenous reconciliation

The Trudeau government's budgetary promise to Canada’s Indigenous communities is as encouraging as it is overdue   “I commit to you that the Government of Canada will walk with you on a path of true reconciliation, in partnership and friendship.” So vowed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he donned the traditional headdress accompanying honorary membership in the Tsuut’ina Nation earlier this month. The ceremony, held near Calgary, Alberta, involved over 100 Treaty Chiefs from across Canada. Trudeau was also awarded the name Gumistiyi, “The One Who Keeps Trying.” As evidenced by the government’s inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women, as well as last week’s budget, which directs billions in new funding toward indigenous communities, Trudeau is indeed trying to signal a new federal relationship with Canada’s indigenous citizens. As the prime minister claimed, there was no relationship “more important to me and to Canada” than the one involving “First Nations, the Métis Nation, and the Inuit.” In the budget released last Tuesday by Finance Minister Bill Morneau, $8.4 billion has been earmarked over the next five years, in phases, for infrastructure, health and education initiatives. Declaring the new investment “historic,” Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde claimed the new funding will be a “very significant step” in improving the quality of life “for our people.” The new spending is unparalleled, pledging $3.4 billion more than the moribund 2005 Kelowna Accord, which was endorsed by Paul Martin but eschewed by Stephen Harper. This budgetary promise to Canada’s indigenous communities is as encouraging as it is overdue. As a CBC investigation released last fall revealed, many of Canada’s First Nations still experience appalling health, housing, and sanitation services, mirroring in some cases the desperate conditions of the most impoverished nations in the global south (conditions of special concern for MP Carolyn Bennett, herself a physician and now Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs). Two-thirds of all Canada’s First Nations communities, for example, have been under a drinking water advisory during the past decade, with the Neskantaga First Nation of Ontario suffering under a “boil water” order for 20 years. Imagine having to boil your city tap water for 20 days, let alone 20 years, and you get a droplet of what our indigenous brothers and sisters have to endure each day. For years. And as UN human rights observers, government reports, and media investigations have repeatedly observed, First Nations housing across the nation is deplorable, with severe shortages, overcrowding, and ramshackle homes the norm rather than the exception. In the devastating case of the northern Ontario Cree community of Attawapiskat, for example, the Cree leadership was forced to declare a state of emergency five years ago. With dozens of families living in non-insulated tents and makeshift sheds, sans heat or water, and many more living in condemned buildings, conditions are death-dealing. The average temperature for January in Attawapiskat is -27C. While indigenous leaders such as Chief Bellegarde have welcomed the increased resources heralded in the new budget, others, such as Cindy Blackstock, President of the First Nation Child and Family Caring Society, have been less enthusiastic. She notes that $634.8 million pledged to child welfare is spread out over five years, when there is urgent need now for help. Moreover, she notes, the largest portion is slated for the fall of 2019, after the next federal election. For Timothy Leduc, a scholar whose research touches on indigenous world views and climate change, such critiques reflect a sense that Canada needs to move eventually to a federal budget that “totally revisions” the status quo. Leduc, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of the forthcoming book, A Climate of Mind: Passages from Fur to Energy and Beyond, notes there is a “deep historic discord” between Canada’s historical resource-based economy and Indigenous lifeways entailing profound connections to the land. We are in a time, he avers, “when fast and broad changes are needed; changes that have cultural depth and practical implications for all.” As Leduc’s work suggests, the healing of relations and the fostering of friendship among indigenous persons, the Canadian government, and the entire multicultural skein of Canada, will involve deep shifts in our reigning social, economic, cultural and ecological patterns. This healing will require that all of us, not just the prime minister, “keep trying.” By: Stephen Bede Scharper  republished with his permission.  Stephen Bede Scharper is an associate professor of environment at the University of Toronto. His column appears monthly.

I Saw a Cross Upon a Hill : A Donkey's Tale

Are you enamoured by my cousins, Eeyore, that loveable donkey from the tales of Winnie the Pooh or is your style more a moviegoer’s favourite, tough guy, Donkey, Shrek’s talkative sidekick?  Do you sometimes find yourself humming that delightful Donkey Serenade, keeping company with a mule?  Such light hearted fun; but let’s put aside talk of my fictitious cousins.  Since truth is often stranger than fiction, let me tell you a little about myself, my humble self whom Chesterton once described in his humourous little poem as one:

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

But let me back track a little. About thirty three years ago, as legend has it, a humble little burro was chosen to carry pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to give birth to her Child. Did this not foreshadow the day I would be chosen to carry her Son into Jerusalem?  I will never forget that day! How could I forget our humble God enthroned upon my back?  I carried him that day, cautiously weaving through the cheering crowds, when all at once ‘There was a shout about my ears, and palms before my feet.’

His mission almost finished, I heard him warn his disciples that He would soon be put to death. Put to death, how could that be?  Surely, I had gotten it all wrong! 

I’m just a donkey, just the ‘devil’s walking-parody on all four footed things.’  Perhaps that’s all you think I am. However, when a distant rumble, ‘Crucify him’, pierced my ears, I stood and shuddered.   In the distance I saw a cross upon a hill and wished I could have carried it for him. 

No ludicrous buffoon am I.  No donkey ever was. You see, because I carried the King, donkeys, generations after me, bear a cross upon their backs.  May you, my friend, I beg you, think twice before you call someone an ass – for she or he, too, bears the divine.

Guest blogger Sr. Magdalena Vogt, Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood

                The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient, crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

         C. K. Chesterton

International Women’s Day

Monday, March 7th is International Women’s Day, celebrating the progress of women. Over the last year we have seen continued growth in our world towards greater equality, justice, and meaning for the lives of female identified people. Women and girls are courageously claiming their space and becoming a visible presence in the public domain. Through their social, economic, cultural and political achievements they are boldly demonstrating a collective response to ending poverty and violence. Award winning journalist Sally Armstrong in her book, Ascent of Women, compellingly tells their empowering stories of making change happen.

The 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality. We do indeed need to step up as a global community to strengthen commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights.  We must re-commit daily to end violence against women in all its forms.

Even in adversity there is cause to celebrate. We are made aware of this in Canada, as we witness the struggles of Indigenous Women throughout their lands. In their daily lives, these women encounter multiple layers of violence that continue to threaten their existence, well-being and spirituality.  While facing such dramatic challenges they continue to emphasize the importance of action, community and care of Earth as a process of healing.

Indigenous women’s leadership is informing us that gender equality is a compass to how we share our world.  They are tackling issues of identity, culture, empowerment and opportunity through land defense, risking their liberties to stop the environmental impact of pipeline construction and shale gas mining. Raising their voices, they are demanding both human justice and equality and eco-justice for the land. They are reminding us that the struggles of women are indivisible from the destruction of planetary eco-systems. To reverence one is to love the other. They are sharing the wisdom that their healing – the healing of the global community- is intrinsically connected to the healing of our wounded Earth.

On this International Women’s Day, together let us set our intention to end violence against women. Let us raise up the many courageous women who are beacons of hope to us all and who reflect so clearly our interconnectedness with all creation. 

Guest blogger,    Janet Speth, Sister of St. Joseph of Toronto

Find out more about the new commitments under the UN Women’s Step It Up Initiative

http://www.unwomen.org/en/get-involved/step-it-up

We All Need a Little Manure

During the Lenten readings, Jesus challenges us with the well-known Parable of the Barren Fig Tree: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” Luke 13:6-9

You and I are the ‘fig trees’ in God’s vineyard. Are we bearing abundant fruit? Or are we barren? At the outset of Lent, we were invited to practice some serious mercy-ing. Two weeks into this Lenten season, I am struggling along. If you are anything like me, you possibly also struggled somewhere along the way. In the parable I see the gardener fervently, (perhaps foolishly) digging, digging, digging around that tree. And then he beckons to me, and hands me a spade.

Spade in hand, let us ‘dig the word’ which Jesus presents to us in this parable. I don’t own a fig tree, but remember well the fig tree laden with luscious fruit, under which I played as a young child. However, now I am an avid lover of African violets. Both they and fig trees flourish when the soil is well aerated and given manure. How do we, God’s fig trees, assure that we flourish and bear abundant fruit? Our ever patient God daily nourishes our lives with mercy, which contributes to the fertility of the soil we need to bear fruit. All we need to do is dig diligently around our roots to prepare the soil for God’s enriching mercy, often bestowed on us through the kind actions of others, so we can bear abundant fruit. Enough fruit to generously share morsels of mercy with all who daily cross our path.

"A good tree doesn't produce bad fruit; on the other hand, a bad tree doesn't produce good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit.” Lk 6: 43-45

Guest Blogger: Sr. Magdelena Vogt, CPS

Paying It Forward

This is Sunitha Gabbeta showing affection to an orphan. Sunitha lives in Garnepalli, a remote village in south-east India. She is illiterate and earns less than a 1$/day. She has two children.

She is a member of SOPAR’s Women Development Program in India– a program that emphasizes the formation of self-help groups in order to bring rural, poor and marginalized Indian women together, build their capacities and encourage their active participation in different activities geared towards empowerment and community development. 

Becoming a Women Program member changed Sunitha’s life. Before joining the program, she lived a secluded life, was shy and felt uneasy to come out of her home. With the help of SOPAR and with time, she has developed self-confidence, gained knowledge and improved her family’s economic conditions but that is not all…

Sunitha never thought of helping others. She talks to us about her new life:

“I have just enough money to feed my children but I know that some others in my village have harder situations than me. I want to help them. I want to support abandoned orphans and neglected old age people. I can’t give them much but I can show them affection and from time to time, give them a meal. Every year, I forego my daily wage to participate in the collective birthday celebrations of orphans organized by SOPAR and to listen to the orphans talk about their joys and sorrows. I also donate a small amount to help with their education. SOPAR made me understand that I too can help others even though I am poor. I know now it is the right thing to do. I explain all these things to my children and encourage them to help others. By helping others, I feel I am helping myself.”      

SOPAR’s trainings include talks on basic human values and get women to think of others in need. The trainings bring true attitude change: these rural poor uneducated women become partners in bettering their community and many become donors to support those who are less privileged than themselves. SOPAR’s work transforms beneficiaries into partners, and ultimately into donors:  last year 48 260 poor rural women members contributed an impressive $95 000 towards orphan education!

Sunitha’s actions are a strong example of the gift of self and force us to recognize that we can all do a little something to make a difference in other people’s lives.

Let’s ask ourselves the following question: what gesture or action can we do today to positively change the world around us?

200 000 women like Sunitha participate in our Women Program, a program supported by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada and many other Canadians donors.

Janice Aubry, Program Officer