My congregation, First Mennonite Church of San Francisco, has been studying about colonization and its persevering with results since I based the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition in 2014 with Sarah Augustine and Anita Amstutz. We supported this studying by turning into a member of the Restore Community coalition, advocating for the Indian Baby Welfare Act, and internet hosting members of the San Carlos Apache once they got here to federal district court docket to defend their Oak Flat sacred website towards the copper mining company.
Our dedication went to the subsequent stage after we determined to award a $100,000 grant to a bigger congregation to rent Augustine as a full-time Indigenous organizer for the coalition. We’re not a big congregation – and as a result of lack of members through the pandemic, we face a attainable price range shortfall subsequent 12 months. However we imagine now could be the time for the coalition and Augustine's work to maneuver ahead.
Along with studying about colonization, our congregations are awakening to the connections between the Doctrine of Discovery and the roots of the local weather/environmental disaster in our use of indigenous lands and peoples.
We within the wealthy International North dwell in a state of ecological overshoot: Our demand for pure sources exceeds the regenerative capability of the earth's ecosystem.
We should transfer from a creature-destroying civilization based mostly on extraction and exploitation to a sustainable one. Environmental thinker Joanna Macy calls it the Nice Turning. This imaginative and prescient motivates Kinari Webb, who based Well being in Concord, a non-profit group that companions with indigenous communities to reverse the deforestation of tropical forests.
After studying Augustine's ebook The earth is just not empty, Webb instructed me, “I wish to help Sarah's management, as many have supported mine. The world wants her management now.”
She gave cash for this perception. Compelled by Augustine's insistence that it’s immoral to revenue from investments in extractive industries equivalent to mining that devastates indigenous communities, Webb and her spouse Stephanie donated an fairness fund price greater than $18,000 to rent Augustine full-time. She inspired the remainder of the congregation to do the identical.
“It's a really scary course of for us to provide a lot cash,” she mentioned. “We're anxious about Rowan. [their son’s] future, and but we see it as a distinct sort of funding sooner or later that they may inherit. . . . For us, it’s also a type of reparations. I’m a agency believer that when God calls, many optimistic issues will come out of it.”
We answered the decision. In 4 months, First Mennonite Church raised $100,000 to create an identical grant attraction. It was like an actual outpouring of the Spirit. For years, myself and the coalition have longed to rent Augustina full-time to do the work she has devoted her life to. For many years, she has been a number one voice within the Christian Church's name to dismantle the constructions that oppress indigenous peoples and deprive them of their lands—constructions that the Christian Church established centuries in the past.
I imagine that these identical constructions have now introduced us to a degree of disaster. I imagine that is it kairos the time, the fullness of time, after we should all attend to the Nice Conversion.
And so our congregation points a name: Will you be a part of us and empower Augustine and the coalition to do that necessary work? We are going to match each greenback donated to Augustine's Wage Marketing campaign as much as $100,000 by Indigenous Peoples Day, October tenth. To take action, go to dofdmenno.org/donate.
There are different methods to hitch our coalition's work for Earth Therapeutic and Justice with and for Indigenous Peoples. We invite your volunteer power to our committees and your dedication to our corrections community (dofdmenno.org/coalition-structure-and-committees). Thanks!
Sheri Hostetler is the senior pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco.
