Thursday of the Third Week of Advent
There was a time before...
The violence of prisons and policing did not exist in Native communities before Settler colonialism; community care and accountability was the way of being.
How are we holding our government accountable to uphold justice without the violence of incarceration?
There will be a time after...
-Meditation by Indigenous Solidarity Collective Member Scott Pyzik.
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: 29-30
Justice
“29. We call upon the parties and, in particular, the federal government, to work collaboratively with plaintiffs not included in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement to have disputed legal issues determined expeditiously on an agreed set of facts.
30. We call upon federal, provincial, and territorial governments to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in custody over the next decade, and to issue detailed annual reports that monitor and evaluate progress in doing so.”
December 15th, 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.
