London, Ont.
Having established a self-determining Indigenous church within the Anglican Church of Canada, Indigenous Anglicans are now building on that foundation to further shape its ministries and governance, members of the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples (ACIP) told General Synod on June 24.
National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop Chris Harper said since Sacred Circle adopted the Covenant and Our Way of Life as its founding documents in 2023, ACIP—which guides the work of Indigenous Ministries—has sought to expand upon them, including better defining Sacred Circle’s relation to the wider church.
“We needed a little bit more fleshing out and filling out of what it meant to be Indigenous Ministries and what that means in relationship with the Anglican Church of Canada,” Harper said. He described the Covenant and Our Way of Life—analogous to a constitution and canons, respectively—as a “beginning” which ACIP members had fleshed out, “recognizing the need to be able to go in further yet.”
Archdeacon Rosalyn Elm, director of Indigenous Ministries, identified three main areas ACIP was concentrating on: governance, administration and stewardship, and mission and ministry. Archdeacon Travis Enright serves ACIP as chairman of governance, while Bishop of Moosonee Rod BrantFrancis is chairman of the administration and stewardship committee.
Elm detailed various ongoing Indigenous ministries, often carried out by unpaid clergy. “This is our strength, I believe—our mission and our ministry and the way that we serve our people,” she said.
“A lot of our people are non-stipendiary,” she added. “But they serve their people with such respect, with such love and such compassion, and they are true disciples of Jesus Christ. That mission has been largely ignored, but they do such wonderful work in the church.”
Healing is a major focus of this mission and ministry, Elm said, based on proactive rather than reactive approaches that aim to address suicide, pain and trauma in Indigenous communities. She highlighted the work of nurse educator and suicide prevention worker Dorothy Russell-Patterson, who Elm said had created pathways to healing that draw upon both gospel-based discipleship and traditional Indigenous spirituality.
Strengthening and healing Indigenous youth is another priority, Elm said, as Indigenous Ministries seek to provide spaces in which young people can speak to each other about their experiences.
The Rev. Dixie Bird, a suicide prevention worker for the Anglican Church of Canada, has taken the lead in organizing Sacred Beginnings, a national meeting of Indigenous youth that held its first two gatherings in Beausejour, Man. in 2023 and 2024. Bird also helps lead Fire Talk—a joint initiative of Indigenous Ministries, Alongside Hope and the diocese of Brandon that provides online mental-health training for Indigenous young people, with the goal of helping them serve as peer mentors who can support other youth to navigate feelings such as grief, loss, anxiety and depression.
Elm said Indigenous Ministries is also raising money and putting together partnerships to assist communities through programs helping men explore their spirituality and faith. In November, Elm told Council of General Synod that Indigenous Ministries had become aware of the need for programs for Indigenous men in Northern Canada—underserved by mental-health services—after holding listening circles for survivors of abuse by Ralph Rowe, a former Anglican priest and Scout leader convicted of 75 sexual crimes against children in northern Ontario and Manitoba.
Indigenous Ministries is “looking to strengthen whole families, especially after we experienced the tragedy of Ralph Rowe,” Elm said, adding, “Strong men, strong women create strong families.”
New governance structures
Enright told General Synod Indigenous Anglicans had been looking at different forms of governance, decision-making and jurisdiction. Key to their views on governance, he said, was their understanding of geographical language and cultural ways of looking at land and water.
“The land is an integral part of our decision-making process,” Enright said. “The land is a dialogue partner that we need to be part of—the way we divide ourselves up into spiritual territories; we have rules of community, and these rules of community are very much based in different cultural language and historical component parts of the nations.”
Enright stressed the diversity of Indigenous peoples across Canada and identified “kinship relationship structures” as a major goal. The desire of Sacred Circle, he said, was “not to have a homogeneous expression [of community], but a multitude of expressions within a broader context… We’ll continue to be self-determining, but within a context of catholicity.”
“Most of us are duly elected from different diocesan contexts,” he added. “But we also are representative of a broader, cohesive expression of Jesus Christ with an Indigenous facing.”
In working to better define governance structures and the relationship of Sacred Circle to the broader Anglican Church of Canada, Enright said, ACIP used Indigenous forms of decision-making that emphasized listening, sharing and avoiding divisions—recognizing the diverse contexts of Indigenous Anglicans that include residents of both rural and urban areas from coast to coast to coast.
“We are still talking amongst ourselves of how we can be together and bind ourselves together,” Enright said to General Synod. “So we are in a period of incubation to decide how we are going to decide to be with you.”
Non-Indigenous engagement required for healing: ACIP co-chair
During a question-and-answer section, Alicia Sandham, youth delegate from the diocese of Algoma, said she was concerned by parishioners in some churches questioning the practice of incorporating Indigenous cultures and languages into worship.
“My parish has more moved past it, but I’ve heard it in other parishes,” Sandham said. “When we started doing things like singing the doxology in Cree or having the Lord’s Prayer in Cree, I heard this word for word. Someone said, ‘I don’t know why we bother with all this Indigenous stuff’—or actually, I think they said ‘Indian stuff’—‘because we don’t have very many here anyway, so why bother?’” She asked ACIP what advice they would give for non-Indigenous parishes whose members express such views.
Harper recalled a meme that circulated online after Vancouver changed a street name to an Indigenous name which was very long and difficult to pronounce. In the meme, a reporter asks, “How are we supposed to learn to pronounce it?” An Indigenous elder responds, “The same way we did learning English, except we won’t beat you when you get it wrong.”
Canon Murray Still, co-chair of ACIP, said the Anglican Church of Canada had participated for some time in responding to the 93 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). The purpose of the TRC, Still said, was for Canadians to learn about the experience of Indigenous peoples in the residential school system and its effect on their lives, yet he still meets Canadians who have not heard of the TRC, which officially concluded in 2015.
The Anglican Church of Canada in response to the TRC has observed the National Indigenous Day of Prayer on June 21 and produced resources for National Indigenous History Month, Still said. It has striven to increase awareness of Indigenous experiences and the history of colonization through teachings such as the blanket exercise and observance of Orange Shirt Day, or the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, on Sept. 30 to teach people about the intergenerational trauma of residential schools.
Hostility to “Indigenous stuff,” as in the anecdote Sandham described, Still said, is a matter of ignorance. “If you don’t know, you can’t understand,” he said.
“We are now trying to help people to understand we’ve come through a history of colonization and we are now on the road to healing,” Still said. “That healing necessarily involves a relationship with non-Indigenous peoples … It begins with a simple start of saying, ‘Well, let’s do something.’ Maybe it’s picking up a gospel-based discipleship book, which is a study book and it puts the gospel at the very centre of our lives. That’s common to all Christians and it’s common to the Indigenous community. Something simple like that can make a huge difference.”
Reiterating the theme of unity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Anglicans, Harper noted that ACIP had invited all of the Anglican Church of Canada’s bishops to attend the upcoming Sacred Circle in August. “Why? Because you’re family,” he said, adding, “We are part of you and you are part of us.”
General Synod delegates joined hands at the end of ACIP’s report and participated in a round dance.
Correction: This article has been updated from an earlier version to reflect that Alicia Sandham is not a youth delegate.
