Indigenous church introduces mental health programs

The Indigenous Anglican church is beginning work on mental health ministries amid a national epidemic of suicides and overdoses in Indigenous communities, Archdeacon Rosalyn Elm, the church’s Indigenous ministries coordinator, told the Council of General Synod (CoGS) November.  

The programs, which are still in the early stages, are aimed at bolstering mental health ministries in the North. The first area of concern, she said, was programming for Indigenous men, who she said were particularly underserved by mental health services in northern Canada. The church is looking for opportunities to create its own ministry resources and to partner with existing programs offering care to Indigenous men, she said. The Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples (ACIP) is also creating a youth program for peer counselling called The Fire Talks, she said. This seven-month program, still taking shape as of Elm’s address to CoGS, will result in participants getting a certification for peer counselling. “We’re trying to combat the difficulties that our youth face today on a ground level,” Elm said. 

Statistics Canada lists men and boys; First Nations and Métis youth; and people living in Inuit regions in Canada as among the groups with the most elevated suicide rates. According to a 2018 study from the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, the suicide rate among Indigenous youth is five to six times that of the general Canadian population. Statistics Canada notes that keeping definitive and up-to-date records on suicide is challenging. 

Also at CoGS, Canon Murray Still, CoGS representative from ACIP, said he and other Indigenous church leaders were working on planning the next Sacred Circle, tentatively scheduled for early May 2025.  

And Archbishop Anne Germond, acting primate of the Anglican Church of Canada announced she had appointed two Indigenous clergy to join Reimagining the Church: A Primate’s Commission on Proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st Century. Some bishops of the Council of the North, a group of Northern dioceses which receives financial aid from General Synod, had previously raised concerns that the commission had no Indigenous members on it when it made a recommendation for the church to review the council’s structure and funding. 

Archbishop Chris Harper to slow down travel 

National Indigenous Archbishop Chris Harper announced in a speech at CoGS he would slow down his schedule of travel in 2025 following two years of extensive visits to church communities across the country. 

“I’m going to slow down a little because I can’t keep up the pace that I have been going. I’m at a stage where I look out the window and I go, ‘Where am I today?’” he said in a Council of General Synod session dedicated to discussing the work of ACIP. “2025 more or less is that saving grace if you will, just to rebuild my own family because I’ve been away quite a bit,” he added in a conversation with the Journal. “I’ve got a very strong family and relationship, but it’s just my time to turn inward and allow the staff … to take on their role of ministry.” 

For much of the last two years, Harper has borne much of the responsibility for the national office’s department of Indigenous Ministries, which has been understaffed for much of his term as archbishop. “For the first almost year and a half I was the office,” he said. Donna Bomberry, former interim Indigenous Ministry coordinator, and Theresa Mandricks, former program associate, had transitioned out of their roles. 

Now, however, he says he is looking forward to making room for the office’s new staff, including the Rev. Rosalyn Elm, the new Indigenous Ministries coordinator and Krista Pura, the new program associate, to step more fully into their ministry roles. 

“Ros is my number one, in Star Trek terms, to whom many times I’ve given the conn,” he said in his address to CoGS, referencing the term used to denote handing over control of a ship in a naval and science fiction context. He likewise praised Still and Rosie Jane Tailfeathers, representatives to CoGS from ACIP, and Pura, who could not be present at the meeting for family reasons.  

“My hope is for them to let the breeze of what they are trying to do lift them with wings of their own the Creator’s given to them,” he said. But this, he added, would require him to slow down a little and delegate more. 

Indigenous-settler relations in the church 

During the presentation to CoGS on ACIP’s work, Harper said ACIP had opened its doors for bishops from the settler church to join them for any meeting. “We invited all the bishops to come in, to be part of our DNA as we are part of yours,” he said. “You don’t need an invitation, because you are family. And my prayer is that one day it’ll be reciprocated so that I don’t have to ask permission to come to the dioceses to talk to my own people.” In the Anglican Church, it is typical for bishops to await an invitation before visiting another bishop’s diocese. 

Harper described his travels across the country as a profound experience of connecting with Anglicans and sharing the message of the Indigenous church across the country. But he also said in some places, he had received insensitive or inaccurate comments from settler Anglicans and clergy. As examples, he described one congregation asking him to “bring his feathers and his drum and come sing and dance” for them, and others where leaders told him they didn’t think they had any Indigenous people in their dioceses. His hope, he said, was that ACIP’s gesture of openness to the bishops would continue the work of bridge building he had begun in his travels across the country. 

“I’ve told people that it’s easy to find an angry Indigenous person who will want to berate you, who will want to come and tear you down and punish you for the pain that they feel inside. But it’s hard to find an Indigenous person who’s going to want to come and invite you to walk with them and to find a road appealing in peace for us all to walk together,” he said. The latter is the approach he hopes he and the other Indigenous church leaders can foster going forward, he added, because it is the only way to build understanding of the past harms and future opportunities between both parties. “What we need to do is start being able to relate with each other. And the only way to do that is to stay at the table and dialogue, but dialogue with respect,” he said.

This article has been corrected from a previous version which misstated Archdeacon Rosalyn Elm’s title.