Show Notes
Ben Borne was born and raised in Saskatoon within a German Mennonite home. He is also a descendant of Yellow Quill First Nation located near Rose Valley, SK. In this episode Ben talks about understanding how his own identity and reconciliation are connected. In an extremely personal conversation Ben speaks about the realities of growing up denying his Indigenous heritage and the journey he has been on to reclaim this part of himself.
Ben invites others to also search themselves, to understand their place within the reconciliation journey. He challenges people to move beyond listening towards action. While he admits that reconciliation is not the perfect remedy for all the traumas that have been experienced, he notes that "reconciliation re-frames the conversation. It helps bring compassion and empathy where it is desperately needed”.
We invited Ben to our house to have a conversation around these five questions:
1. How would you define reconciliation?
2. What experiences have defined this understanding?
3. Where have you seen grace in the reconciliation journey?
4. How would you invite other people into understanding reconciliation?
5. Why is reconciliation important to you?
Then we recorded his reflections.
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Links from the episode:
White Buffalo Youth Lodge
Friendship Inn
SIGA
Towards a New Relationship: Toolkit for Reconciliation/Decolonization
Mennonite Central Committee Saskatchewan
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Reconcile. Everyday Conversations is a project of Mennonite Central Committee Saskatchewan aimed at facilitating conversations among settler/non-Indigenous Canadians around our role in reconciliation.
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Project Coordinator: Heather Peters
Recording and Editing: Jo Kroeker
Music by A Northern Road to Glory
More from Reconcile. Everyday Conversations
“Action is the part I really focus on in my understanding (of reconciliation) because we can say a lot of things and people can come to a lot of discussion tables, but if you're not actually doing the stuff it is going to be forgotten.”
“I think now though, it's using my voice to create safe spaces, to have tough conversations, but have this conversations in a respectful and safe way. So we can … hear that before you get to reconciliation, you need to hear this ugly truth, right?”
“The chef coat that you see is actually modeled after the Turkish army. And I think there's a lot of a lot of rules and etiquette, and kitchen ways of being that are actually at odds with indigenous culture. So I'm trying to, I guess you could say decolonize that kitchen experience for people.”
In all my conversations with people about reconciliation I have heard that it isn’t an individual journey people are on. The reconciliation path is filled with relationships, teachers, learners and explorers – it is filled with other people. So we have created a reconciliation study guide that accompanies this podcast for you to be able to take to your friends, churches, communities, or neighbourhood book clubs to engage with these conversations together.
“You have to be open to it. You might not want to listen or hear what someone has to say that has a different belief system…. God calls us to love everyone, to listen to their stories. This is what have gotten me started and motivated.”