Show Notes
Reconciliation is “telling each other your stories, making space for others to hear stories, and to find commonality together”.
Greg Wiens has worked as a pastor for 20 years, most recently in the rural community of Waldheim, Saskatchewan at the Mennonite Brethren church. Greg defines reconciliation as “telling each other your stories, making space for others to hear stories, and to find commonality together”. Within this episode he tells stories from throughout his life that have shaped his understanding of how people can learn from each other.
A theme throughout our conversation with Greg was understanding our own privilege and how to listen to stories of oppression with compassion and empathy. Greg believes that Indigenous people will be the leaders of the future church and we need to make space at the table.
We invited Greg to our office 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:
Aboriginal Activist Groups
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
ConnectR
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.”