Canada Day Prayer and Acknowledgement

I will celebrate and honour the Canada that I love and have hope for today, but not before I ACKNOWLEDGE SOME TRUTHS.

* I acknowledge that when our forefathers arrived, they learned all they could from the people who lived here, the trade routes of this continent, how to survive and prosper on the land and in hard winters, and made the first nations people our allies in the European wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, but that when our forefathers found the first nations no longer useful,  we stopped treating them like valued partners.

*I acknowledge that we have a freedom to live where we want, and be whoever we could become, a freedom our own ancestors did not have in the old country, a freedom our ancestors took from those who were here before us.

*I acknowledge that our forefathers forged and built in this land, rights and privileges, democracy, freedom, capitalism, for us to inherit, and that we have never shared with those from whom the land was taken.

*I acknowledge that we believed the people who taught us that the best kind of human being was a  Western  European.  We accepted the privileges of this self-designation as the natural order of things. We learned how not to notice that other s were not given the privileges we have. I acknowledge that such privilege feels like a right, and brings no humility at unworthiness of such grace, but makes us suspicious of those from whom we took it.  

*I acknowledge that we have been secretly pleased, smug and relieved that we are not treated like first nations people are treated.

*I acknowledge that our forefathers made treaties with the first nations peoples,  aware that they would unilaterally change the terms when more settlers arrived, and that thus they swindled the first nations people of their rights and property.

*I acknowledge to you that we as a nation of peoples, have received all the benefits from of the deliberate dispossession of North America from its original peoples, including land, resources, water, forests, coal, oil, gold, prime farm land, birds and animals.  Our forefathers developed the resources of this land and no benefit accrued to the people from whose hands we prized it.

*I acknowledge that our forefathers  pushed the first nations back and back off of the land we had  agreed to by treaty, narrowing and redefining their freedoms, and taking their children, destroying the first nations cultures and identities, placing the children in unsafe conditions. And when those children died, they were hidden.

*I acknowledge that as the dominant culture we preferred not to believe the people who reported abuse in those schools, giving benefit of the doubt to teachers and administrators and religious folk, all of whom were white.

*I acknowledge to you that we have turned away from the damage inflicted on first nations communities and individuals by the school system that our government imposed upon them.

*In this time, as more and more graves of innocent children are shown to exist on the grounds of Residential Schools, and as we celebrate Canada Day, I am aware that the country I love has been a blessing to some, and a curse to others. I acknowledge my profound disappointment in our Forefathers, their dishonesty, their willingness to treat First Nations People with such contempt, and I acknowledge on this 155th anniversary of confederation my deep desire to expunge the curse that others received so that I could have freedom. We are grateful to our soldiers for their sacrifice, a sacrifice demanded of them by our nation, their bodies lying in foreign soil, their memory treasured at home. Can we dare to be repentant to those whose sacrifice was dragged from them with no honour, or gratitude, or sharing? Whose families were torn asunder, whose cultures were rooted out, and whose children were taken away?

PRAYER

O Creator of all. Hear our prayer for Canada, the nation of which we are citizens. On this anniversary of it’s founding, give us hearts of gratitude for what we have received, and all that makes our nation a good  place.  Give us hearts of sorrow for what was denied others. May our greatness as a nation be strengthened as we learn to weep with those who weep, as we learn to ask for forgiveness until we are believed, as we learn to work together for the healing of the damage of the past. May what was seen in small in the new nation of Canada in 1867 now blossom into a blessing for all the people of the land. O God, Creator, thank you for listening to our prayer.

AMEN.

HAI HAI