Acknowledging the Indigenous peoples on whose land our churches sit has the potential to profoundly shift our relationship to our history, our indigenous neighbors, and the land. How might you lead your church through a process that opens the door to awakening?
We are inspired by Vance Blackfox’s call for Lutherans to embrace and practice Native land acknowledgement as just one step towards healing our relationships with one another and the land. In November of 2019, Kim Marinucci Acker and Trevor Bakker (Palo Alto, CA) co-led a small group in their church through an eight-week process of self reflection, research, statement creation, and roll-out to their congregation. Listen to them share experiences and resources on this recorded call (click to hear) and explore the resources below for much more information on this topic.
This Connections Call spurred much interest in collecting more information about:
1) How to respectfully listen and learn to Indigenous knowledge and current communities where you are now living off land First Nation people first belonged to and,
2) How to move forward in love, faith, and action with specific tools using your time, talents and treasure to ensure our our intentions have integrity.
The following is a collection of materials to help forward in this space, please contact us if you know of more organizations, suggested next steps or calls to action we should lift up: