Manage episode 289029308 series 2904952
Spurgeon Root, Director of Outreach Ministries at Healing Hearts, has immersed himself in the work of reconciliation over the past 20 years. Along with his family, he has lived in the North-Central neighbourhood of Regina, a community with a high population of Indigenous people. In this podcast, Spurgeon and his daughter Keziah, discuss their views of reconciliation within this context. They both come with a posture of learning and building relationships where all parties have choice to maintain relationships. To achieve reconciliation, Spurgeon states that a person should look at the relationships involved and what work is needed to move towards a healthy relationship on both sides.
Spurgeon highlights the importance of understanding reconciliation as an ongoing action that impacts both our personal lives and our institutions. People must prepare to work on reconciliation for generations. As Spurgeon says, “For some people this might be disheartening because it seems like a never-ending task. But on the other hand, it can take some of the pressure off because there is no deadline. Just keep going.”
We invited Spurgeon and Keziah into our house and around our dining room table to have a conversation around these five questions:
1. How would you define reconciliation?
2. What experiences have defined this understanding?
3. Where have you seen grace in the reconciliation journey?
4. How would you invite other people into understanding reconciliation?
5. Why is reconciliation important to you?
Then we recorded their reflections.
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Links from the episode:
Healing Hearts Ministries
Christian Community Development Association
If ‘indigenizing’ education feels this good, we aren’t doing it right by Monique Giroux
Office of the Treaty Commission events
Mennonite Central Committee Saskatchewan
Reconcile: Everyday Conversations is a project of Mennonite Central Committee Saskatchewan aimed at facilitating conversations among settler/non-Indigenous Canadians around our role in reconciliation.
Project Coordinator: Heather Peters
Recording and Editing: Joel Kroeker
Music by A Northern Road to Glory
18 episodes