The Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples (ACIP) elected two new co-chairs Nov. 27: Archdeacon Travis Enright, of the diocese of Edmonton, and the Rev. Catherine Askew, of the Anglican Military Ordinariate. National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop Chris Harper told the Council of General Synod (CoGS), meeting Nov. 27-30 in Mississauga, Ont., that the two would begin representing ACIP at the next meeting of CoGS in March 2026.
Enright is the archdeacon for Indigenous ministries in the diocese of Edmonton and a member of the James Smith Cree nation in Saskatchewan. He serves as a parish priest at St. Faith’s Anglican Church in Edmonton. There, his work has been the subject of coverage from the Anglican Journal, the Globe and Mail and the Edmonton Journal for his use of both traditional Anglican and traditional Indigenous expressions of worship.
In a 2009 Anglican Journal story, Askew told the story of how she felt drawn to be a military chaplain as far back as the early 90s and finally sent in her application to become one on September 11, 2001. She was deployed to a support base in Afghanistan for six months during operations by American, Canadian and British forces there. Askew is a member of the Moose Factory Cree nation. She has served as an instructor at the Canadian Forces Chaplain School at CFB Borden and as canon advisor on diversity and inclusion for the Bishop’s Executive Council of the Anglican Military Ordinariate.
Harper also thanked outgoing ACIP co-chairs Canon Murray Still and Rosie Jane Tailfeathers, whom he described as a brother and sister to him. They had forged a familial bond during the long and difficult work they had done together on the founding of the self-determining Indigenous Anglican Church, he said.
Harper also announced Still and Tailfeathers would continue serving ACIP in the newly formed positions of standing elders, he said. The standing elders are experienced members of the Indigenous church with ACIP experience who will work closely with the presiding elder—another title of the National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop—of Sacred Circle, he said. Their purpose is to retain and dispense the wisdom and memory of the Indigenous church’s history, the reasons its structures take the forms they do and the intentions behind the work it is carrying forward, said Harper. The exact shape of the positions is still being worked out, he added.
“Thank you to both of you as you have worked with us through CoGS, you have shared your wisdom, you have shared the stories of who we are and what we’re trying to do,” he said. Sometimes representing Sacred Circle’s work to CoGS was an exercise in walking in both worlds, he said. “We get challenged and stretched to the utmost—sometimes so much that it almost splits the pants,” he joked.
Archbishop Shane Parker, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he was deeply supportive and grateful for the work of Sacred Circle. He thanked God that after a period of Canadian history when the deep roots of Indigenous Anglicanism had not been honoured, they were now honoured and expressed through the work of Sacred Circle. He, too, thanked Still and Tailfeathers for their contributions to that work and for communicating it to CoGS.
