Dear Editor:
Regarding that excellent column by Rev. Beatrix Schirner, “Church hopes to play part in aboriginal healing.”
So, churches ran the residential schools that tried their damnedest to make the native children into “civilized,” white English-speaking Christians. The children were conditioned to believe there was something very wrong with them if they didn’t adopt the language, manners, beliefs, religions, and culture of the English and French patriarchal authorities of the time.
It is now acknowledged the consequences of that determination had long-term devastating effects on natives and now churches want to prescribe more of the same as a way to be part of the healing of the dysfunction and sickness that resulted from being forced to ignore their native spirituality, language, myths and customs?
How exactly will continuing to push more of the same old elitist but erroneous Christian beliefs help anyone to heal? I don’t know of any Christian church that doesn’t promote the fallacy that asserts their Jesus is the only way. After all, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost doesn’t seem to have done much for the children forced into Christian and Catholic residential schools.
I would think that the best way to support and encourage healing would be for Christians to admit that theirs is not the only way to connect with the higher powers of the universe and to witness, learn from, and respect a spirituality that is more attuned to nature, more protective of Mother Earth, and that is way older and more time-tested than Christianity.
Evone Monteith