Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
Time does not heal all wounds. Some people may prefer not to hear the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action, dismissing the harms they name as things that happened in the past, long ago.
The Lord hears the cry of the poor, and so must we. The abuses and deaths in boarding schools did not happen long ago. Missing and murdered Indigenous women did not disappear from their families and homes long ago. Colonialism did not happen long ago.
These realities have been ignored for too long. This isn't the time to bury wrongdoing in the past. It's time to finally, and truly, listen to Indigenous people.
-Meditation by Indigenous Solidarity Collective Member Teresa Thompson.
The 2022 Advent Calendar is a project of CTA's Indigenous Solidarity Collective, a working group that addresses the Catholic Church's historical and current role in colonialization. To support more projects from working groups like this one, please consider making a contribution!
Call To Action's 2022 Advent Calendar, planned and written by the Indigenous Solidarity Collective, provides 27 days of prayer and study to lead into action and solidarity with Indigenous communities. Here is today's meditation.
Call to Action: 25-26
Justice
“25. We call upon the federal government to establish a written policy that reaffirms the independence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate crimes in which the government has its own interest as a potential or real party in civil litigation.
26. We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to review and amend their respective statutes of limitations to ensure that they conform to the principle that governments and other entities cannot rely on limitation defenses to defend legal actions of historical abuse brought by Aboriginal people.”
December 13th, 2022
Further Reading
"Indigenous Peoples and Violence" from the Association on American Indian Affairs.
"The U.S. criminal justice system disproportionately hurts Native people: the data, visualized" from the Prison Policy Initiative.
"Native American women face an epidemic of violence. A legal loophole prevents prosecutions" from NBC News.
"The Catholic Church must come clean—completely—about what it did to Native Americans" from America magazine.
The watercolor paintings featured on this calendar were created by Duane Yazzie, an artist of Hopi and Navajo ancestry. Yazzie creates artwork that reflects his Indigenous heritage and his childhood spent in the Southwest.
