Canadian churches use portion of budgets for Indigenous reparations

In many Canadian churches today, it is common to hear a land acknowledgment at the start of a service. It’s a way to recognize the First Nations who occupied the land. Three Mennonite churches in Winnipeg, Man., and one in Kitchener, Ont., have taken that a step further by deciding to pay reparations to Indigenous people on whose land their buildings are located. In so doing, they take inspiration from Adrian Jacobs, senior leader for Indigenous Justice and Reconciliation in the Christian Reformed Church in Canada. Jacobs is a member of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy of the Grand River Territory in Ontario who also worked for Mennonite Central Committee Ontario. For some years he has proposed that churches pay a symbolic amount to work at reconciliation with Indigenous people. “It would be a spiritual covenant with local Indigenous people, a treaty between people with respect to the land,” he said. Jacobs suggests that churches do this by annually donating 1% of their budget, or of the value of their property, to local Indigenous-led organizations. It is a way to recognize what was lost by the original occupants of the land through broken treaties. So far, four congregations, all of...