Lenten Practice: Praying UNDRIP

Last spring as some of us were wrestling with the challenge to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for reconciliation for the church. This was one of the recommendations made in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. One friend articulated the problem well. "I don't relate to this language so it is hard to make it a framework. How could we begin to get this language inside of us so it shapes our prayers and our imaginings?"

This lenten season some of us are putting ourselves to this task of praying with this document and the news to try and discover new ways of seeing and being shaped. Below is one offering.

UNDRIP Article 7:2

Indigenous peoples have the collective rights to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.

News Story

No Aboriginal cultural, language supports for Labrador foster children. 

Prayer

God forgive us for our arrogance wherever we confuse our embedded racism with "what is best". Watch over the children who have been removed from the homes and families they were born into. Bring your healing to family systems that have been subject to generations of trauma and violence. Bring your justice to the systems of violence that have been called systems of care. Teach us all to love in ways that are self-giving rather than self-justifying. Free us from assumptions that run deep and divide us.