Addressing the Enduring Challenges between Church and Indigenous Peoples

A Māori theologian from Aotearoa, once said that it wasn’t enough to engage in an arid abstract interpretation of our way of life as Māori, but rather what was called for was a ‘taste of reality.’ A reality that for Māori and indeed many other Indigenous peoples around the world, has been shaped by the voracious appetites of colonisers, whose rampant rampage has left as witness the scars etched upon our ancestral lands, our stolen legacies with its inherited pain, mingling with our grief, unspent.

Companionship in this context, therefore, in its truest form, propels us as the ecumenical fellowship, into that space where reality is met and tasted. Furthermore, sacred companioning takes us on a transformative and sacrificial journey, beyond a comfortable, risk-free engagement – to that of a companionship of solidarity that requires of us to risk everything, to give our all. Because nothing less, will do.

I was 25 years old in 1995, when I first walked through the doors of the ecumenical centre. I was coming as the indigenous intern, sent by my church to work with the Indigenous Peoples Consultant, Bishop Eugenio Poma, an Aymara from Bolivia in the Programme to Combat Racism. At that time, the WCC had proclaimed a strong commitment to the accompaniment of the justice struggles of Indigenous Peoples, with a focus on indigenous land rights and sovereignty, indigenous spirituality and healing and reconciliation.

Almost 30 years later the question of WCC’s ongoing commitment to the struggles of Indigenous Peoples will once again be answered by its members churches in your deliberations at this central committee. And even as our collective memory echoes with the resonant milestones of the past and the hard-fought incremental gains, still we must be bold enough to speak to the enduring challenges that persist in the relationship between churches and Indigenous Peoples.

For companionship is not without its indigenous critique. Power dynamics and the power imbalances inherent in companionate relationships, particularly when it comes to Indigenous communities and the Church, continually need to be addressed and dismantled. Indigenous perspectives resound with a resolute call for agentic companionship, and we saw this in Karlsruhe last year—an unwavering demand for authenticity, rooted in reciprocal relationships founded upon the pillars of mutual respect, collaboration and collective decision-making.

It requires a spirituality of companionship that exhorts us to “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.” Or as it says in the First Nations Version, an Indigenous Translation of the New Testament, to “Dance with the ones who dance with joy and shed tears with the ones whose hearts have fallen to the ground.”

For it is only when our feet have moved joyfully over the whenua (the land) and when our hearts have fallen to the ground, when our tears have touched Papatūānuku, our earth parent – it is only then that our connectedness with creation and our shared longing for reconciliation and unity is made most visible.

For as we dared to say together in Karlsruhe, with passion and hope - “This would be a unity in which God establishes justice, an equal place for all, through which creation may be renewed and strengthened.”

May it be so.