Indigenous Peoples Sunday

Psalm 96 reminds us to praise God for the marvelous work of creation. We haven’t always been good at caring for creation. Some might suggest that we still aren’t good at caring for creation. That we put other priorities before the care of God’s good creation.

Others will tell you its ok. Afterall God created humanity to have dominion, that is we have a right to dominate creation. I would suggest that this is a poor way of reading Genesis and some bad theology. We are invited into relationship with God and creation. The psalm reminds us that creation rejoices before God and that the people are called to be faithful.

What does it mean to be faithful toward creation? How do we live that out? This is where we can learn from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. In the recent issue of Broadview magazine, there is an article written by Taynar Simpson, chief of Alderville First Nation. In the article Chief Simpson talks about how Rice Lake, just to our south, has been granted personhood and legal rights under First Nation law. You might think that is odd, how can a lake or a piece of land have legal rights? Consider that corporations have legal rights and that those legal rights protect them better than the legal system might protect you.

The act of providing legal rights to Rice Lake allows for the opportunity to protect this body of water, ensuring that it is able to provide for generations to come. Right now the lake is unhealthy and its future is at risk.

On National Indigenous Peoples Day it is important for us to pause and reflect about what we can learn from our Indigenous siblings. It is also important for us to reflect on past harm and the continuing process of reconciliation. Lask week while I was at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, I had the opportunity to hear Jim Bear Jacobs speak. Jim Bear is the Program Director of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. He spoke about how the community came together to counter state-sanctioned violence against the people of Minneapolis. He drew back to the Papal Bulls of the 15^th century and the Doctrine of Discovery. A Doctrine that the PCC and UCC have only repudiated in recent years. He described to us how based on that Doctrine, some lives are valued and some are discarded and decreed disposable. He shared how many who were rounded up by the government were done so not because they were undocumented but because they were deemed disposable. Jim Bear ended his talk by quoting the Catholic theologian and Jesuit priest Fr. James Keenan: “that sin is not just when we are weak and struggling, but the greater sin is when we are strong and can’t be bothered.”

Danny Zacharias, Associated Dean at Acadia Divinity College writes, “as an Indigenous man, I cannot help but also think of Indigenous communities throughout much of the world, but especially here on Turtle Island (North America). The church has perpetuated much harm among my people, the First Nations of Canada. Christian theology demonized our culture. Christian teachings like the Doctrine of Discovery bolstered colonial conquest and dehumanization. Christian churches helped to run Indian Residential and Boarding schools, which sought to kill the Indian in the child. It should not be hard for people to understand why there is sometimes such outright hatred toward the Christian church within Indigenous communities. And yet, the reality is that many Indigenous people are followers of the Jesus Way.”

This is true both of the Presbyterian and United Church. There is a tension that we hold onto as we reconcile with our past and work towards a better future.

I share with you now a brief meditation written by the Rev. Bruce Neil Kakakaway, he was born in Saskatchewan and serves as a minister of The United Church of Canada. He is a residential school survivor.

Psalm 137:1–9

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down, and there we wept
    when we remembered Zion.
² On the willows^[a] there
    we hung up our harps.
³ For there our captors
    asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

⁴ How could we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand wither!
⁶ Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy.

⁷ Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
    Down to its foundations!”
⁸ O daughter Babylon, you devastator!^[b]
    Happy shall they be who pay you back
    what you have done to us!
⁹ Happy shall they be who take your little ones
    and dash them against the rock!

Story/Reflection

Psalm 137 is a song of profound displacement, mourning for a lost homeland. It conveys raw, unsettled anger towards oppressors. When connected to Indigenous themes, it serves as a strong reminder of the shared trauma of forced assimilation, the theft of ancestral lands, and the resilience of Indigenous cultures. Ultimately, Psalm 137, when viewed through an Indigenous lens, is a testament to the resilience of those who refuse to allow their identity to be forgotten. It also recognizes that while the pain of exile and colonization is agonizingly true, Creator hears the laments of the displaced and honours the determination to remember who we are.

“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.” And Jesus replied, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” Amen.