THE search for racial justice and healing was central to the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States, which addressed systematic racism and its historic involvement with indigenous boarding schools, at which many children died (News, 8 April).
The Convention passed a resolution to create a church-wide coalition for racial equality and justice, setting aside $2 million a year for the work for the next two years. The group would co-ordinate work in support of “racial justice and equity and the dismantling of white supremacy” inside and outside the Church, the resolution said.
It was introduced by the Arizona deputy, the Revd John Kitagawa, who said: “The pain and suffering caused by white supremacy cannot be minimised or denied. The veil of the continued complicity by institutions, including our Church, is lifting to expose the wounds of generational trauma and internalised oppression.”
Dealing with these challenges, he said, would constitute “a seismic shift” for the Church.
The Bishop of Connecticut, the Rt Revd Ian Douglas, said that the resolution focused on extending the work currently being done in “becoming beloved community”, the Church’s longstanding commitment to healing, reconciliation, and justice.
“We have realised that the structures of our Church are and have historically been polluted by the realities of racisms, white supremacy, and colonialism,” he said. “What is offered here in . . . the Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice is a way by which this Church, for generations going forward, can offer a voluntary community, a voluntary society outside of and in addition to historic structures that have been affected by racism and white supremacy, and continue to be so.”
The Convention also pledged $2.5 million over the next two years to investigate the part played by the Church in indigenous boarding schools, creating a fact-finding commission to hear the stories of survivors and establish spiritual healing centres in indigenous communities. The Episcopal Church is believed to have links to nine boarding schools, which took in Native American children from many different tribes during the 19th and 20th centuries, and in which the children underwent a process of assimilation to white culture, abandoning their own cultural identity and becoming Christian.
In emotional testimony, some deputies spoke of their own experience in the boarding schools.
A member of the House of Deputies from the Navajoland area, Ruth Johnson, survived two schools, and said that she found it hard to talk about her experiences. “My hell began at a boarding school in New Mexico, where I was beaten. I could have easily been one of those who didn’t make it home.”
An Alaska deputy, Paul Williams, said that his father was also a victim of the boarding schools. “As far as he knew, his name was only number 89.
“Many of my relatives were in the same situation. They only spoke our native language [when they were sent away] . . . but it was beaten out of them through the churches and the schools. They came home thinking that’s their name. Now is a time of healing, healing of our bodies, healing of the land.
“It happened many years ago, but it still affects us today as indigenous people of North America and all of us as God’s children, and I hope and pray healing will start,” he said.
Bishop Carol Gallagher, an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation, who provides pastoral support in the diocese of Albany, told bishops that her grandfather was a survivor of a residential indigenous boarding school.
“I can tell you that what has happened with indigenous boarding schools over the generations: it was a government policy to teach us to be something other than who we were. Children were taken in exchange for food and sustenance, so families could survive. Many children never made it home, as we have learned; but we, as a Church, participated joyfully, willingly, and with great enthusiasm,” she said.
Two bishops spoke of the repatriation of the bodies of some of the indigenous children who died in the schools.
The Bishop of South Dakota, the Rt Revd Jonathan Folts, said that nine children had been repatriated to the Rosebud reservation (News, 11 February), and he presided at the funeral of one. “I could barely find my voice when I stood up to speak to it,” he said.