September 30th is known in Canada as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It was originally honoured as Orange Shirt Day, which was created in 2013 by the St.Joseph Mission Residential School Commemoration Project of Williams Lake, BC. The spokesperson for this group, Phyllis Webstad, told her now nationally known story of how her orange shirt, as well as every remaining symbol of her home and culture, was taken from her when she was first forced into a government-mandated residential school. In 2021, 25 years after the last of the 140 federally run residential schools had closed down and 13 years after Prime Minister Harper formally apologized to the students of residential schools, the federal government of Canada officially announced that September 30th would “honour the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.” They stated that “Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

These are good words, from our government. Words of progress. But what do these public statements from our country’s leaders mean to us, when they have also been criticized by the UN Human Rights Committee for their lack of action taken to address issues of disproportionate violence against Indigenous women, disproportionate rates of homelessness and incarceration in Indigenous communities due to the trauma of residential schools and lack of access to services, and the continuous violation of Indigenous Peoples’ land rights? The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs published an article two weeks ago about how the federal government’s LNG Canada project is a direct violation of their pledge to consult or obtain consent from impacted First Nations title holders.

So amid continuous injustices, what does Truth and Reconciliation mean to us? In most gatherings like this, it means a land acknowledgement. In the beginning of every church service, every graduation, every company wide DEI meeting, to teach us how to pronounce the names of whose land upon which we gather, to spread awareness, it is a good first step (which took several steps to get to in the first place). But It cannot be our last. We say the words so often, that for many of us it becomes routine. And unfortunately, sometimes the words can start to lose their weight.

Traditional, ancestral, and unceded.
Traditional and ancestral, in reference to the tens of thousands of years that Indigenous peoples have inhabited this land. A living, breathing history as old as the land itself, that has suffered immeasurable harm in just the last 158 years since colonizers came to these shores. Unceded, as in lands that were never legally signed over or transferred to the Crown. As in, stolen.

I can tell you what I know these words mean but I will never be able to convey the true pain they represent. And part of the responsibility of working towards truth and reconciliation is to seek out those truths, from the perspectives and stories of Indigenous peoples themselves.

I don’t say any of this to shame any of us here listening, or to convince anyone that our faith and our city are things to be ashamed of. I speak to you today as someone who was raised in faith, with stories of this church and this city being places of love and acceptance. I speak to you as a descendant of immigrants, who came to this city a hundred years ago in search of a better life and found prosperity and community here. And I feel comfortable admitting here, in this holy space, that I have been struggling as of late, reconciling the kindness of this church, the beauty and freedom of the city I was raised in, with the actions that have been taken in the name of faith, and a national history of exclusion and discrimination.

I struggle with the fact that, like life, history is full of contradictions. I have a beautiful life here, because of what my ancestors sacrificed, because of what they knew could be found here. But I also have the receipt for the $500 head tax they made my grandfather pay. I heard the stories of the raids on Chinatown, the calls to preserve a “White Canada”. I felt the echoes of that old hate in the wake of the pandemic. I will never understand the pain of those who suffered and lost so much to the residential school system, to the colonialism that ran rampant across these lands. All I can say is that for all the immeasurable gifts and opportunities this country has provided for us, my family has also seen the side of the city with hate in their hearts. And in their policies.

How do we be proud of this country and all it has provided for us, of our faith and the peace and love it brings us, without excusing the horrific actions that plague both histories?

It is a hard question. One that came up again recently, at an interfaith reading group hosted by Trinity Grace United Church. The idea of an interfaith reading group was delightful to me, as my love of books and bookclub discussions comes from the merging of different perspectives, of different ways of knowing. And without that reading group, I never would have heard an anti-zionist prayer leader and Hebrew Priestess talk about how for them, in their faith, the question itself was the holy part. And so the Christian pastor who was co-leading the group spoke to us, stating that here at least, we would have permission to question. She called the concept a gift from our Jewish siblings.

The idea that it is not disrespectful or sacrilegious to question, but holy, shook me. Questioning what service in the name of God looks like, what obeying His word and His lessons really feel like. I was taught that to have faith is to be obedient, unquestioning. But I fear that in a world of so many different shades of grey, an outlook so black and white leaves gaps, leaves questions – especially in those who are young or just learning about faith.

This monthly reading group is focused on the Book of Joshua. One that is famously skipped very often, due to a general discomfort with its content. Joshua is instructed to enter Canaan and destroy every man, woman, child, and animal, for they are morally corrupt, and to distribute the land among God’s Chosen (Joshua 6:20-22). That narrative of divinely ordered violence has been used to justify genocides and conquests all over the world. The Crusades of the Middle Ages, the Jordanian campaign of 1967, the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestine, and closest to home; The colonization and attempted cultural genocide of the Indigenous peoples on whose land we reside.

But in our lectionary reading today, the apostle Paul charges Timothy, as a man of God, to flee from “foolish and harmful desires [like greed] that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9), and to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:11). Now that sounds more familiar to me. But it is not as easy as choosing to follow one Book over the other. The concept that staggering loss of life is acceptable, as long as those who die are somehow lost or corrupt, is shown in our most sacred of texts. Whether you personally believe it is merely hyperbole illustrating a point or that perhaps these were the actions taken and recorded by man not God, it is difficult to believe that the God we worship, who taught us of love and acceptance, who urged Timothy towards gentleness and faith, could ever justify the separation of over 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and the attempted erasure of their entire culture.

I cannot pretend to know what actions taken by which prophets were truly the will of God, what wars have ever been truly divinely justified. And I cannot pretend to know the pain and trauma of all those who have suffered at the hands of those claiming to be acting in God’s name.
All I do know is that I believe in the faith that I have been shown, by the incredible work of this congregation over the years and the United Church as a whole. The faith I have seen in organizations like First United, as they represent their faith through service to the most vulnerable of our communities and acknowledging that there is so much more work to be done. I know that I believe in a God to whom every child matters.

I have trouble still, reconciling the tenants that I learned of Christianity with the bloody history it has left behind. But another lesson I learned recently, from our bookclub and the words of a Potawatomi botanist desperately trying to convey concepts of reciprocity and gratitude, is that some things shouldn’t be easy. That sometimes, the love is in the labour, the value in the struggle.

I am starting to have faith that this struggle is better than continuing to skip over the book of Joshua, or ignoring the effects that residential schools had and continue to have on the Indigenous peoples of these lands. I am working on believing that asking hard questions, grappling with what it means to have faith and be Christian in our constantly shifting modern world and complex political landscape, to continuously and consistently choose to show our faith in our actions and our love, that that in itself is holy.

Amen

(Gabrielle Mew is the chair of WPGUC’s Reconciliation Committee, and she offered this reflection on Sunday, September 28, 2025, to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.)