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Winnipeg, Man.
Jubilee calls for right relations with earth, aboriginal peoples


The Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative (CEJI) is calling on Christians to restore right relations with the earth and with Aboriginal peoples.

The CEJI is a project of 38 Canadian churches, coalitions and church-based organizations. Themes in previous years were “Release from Bondage” and “Redistribution of Wealth”, in which about 640,000 Canadians signed a petition calling on governments to cancel the debts of the world’s poorest countries.

This year’s two-pronged theme focuses on the problem of climate change and the land claims of Aboriginal peoples. The initiative finds its inspiration in the Old Testament Jubilee command that included a call to return land and give rest to the land.

This year, to help care for creation, Christians are asked to encourage the Canadian government to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which it promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. While Canada signed the Protocol, it has yet to ratify it in Parliament, and little action is being taken to arrest climate change.

Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, continue to flood the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. The gas build-up means heat from the sun is trapped, causing an increase in the average global temperature. That could have devastating results, causing both drought and floods. Jubilee organizers have designed a postcard campaign calling for more action on climate change, to be signed and sent to both provincial and federal governments, and Imperial Oil, which has been in strong opposition to the Kyoto Protocol.

Esther Epp-Tiessen, Mennonite Central Committee Canada peace ministries coordinator, said it’s also important to consider changes on a more personal level. “We really need to think more seriously about our own fuel consumption. It’s fuel consumption that is the primary culprit in this global warming,” she said. “We need to work at both the personal level and the larger systemic level.”

Petition for land claims commission

For the other part of this year’s theme, the CEJI is asking congregations to sign a petition calling on the federal government to immediately establish an independent commission to deal with Aboriginal land and treaty rights. Organizers are hoping to collect more than 100,000 signatures.

Across the country, hundreds of land claims and other treaty rights issues sit mired in bureaucratic process. Those numbers include about 400 specific claims involving former reserve land that was taken away or land promised in treaties but never transferred – claims in which there is no dispute that the land was promised or once belonged to the reserve.

Over the years, MCC has built relationships with a number of Aboriginal communities across the country that have found their efforts to reconcile claims consistently thwarted.

While an Indian Claims Commission was set up after the 1990 Oka crisis, it isn’t seen as independent, nor are its findings binding. In 1996, the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples also called for an independent claims commission. Currently, the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government are negotiating the mandate of such a body.

The campaign was kicked off September 25, 2000 on Parliament Hill, with church leaders, and a representative from the Assembly of First Nations among the first to sign the petition. Rick Zerbe Cornelsen, coordinator of MCC Canada’s Aboriginal Neighbours program, signed on behalf of MCC.

“Renewal of the earth is a theme Aboriginal people can relate to really well,” said Cornelsen. The two linking themes “highlight the fact that renewal of the earth and right relations with people are connected issues. And that’s a message that comes to us from Hebrew scriptures as well as from Aboriginal peoples.”

 – MCC Canada release

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Last modified July 5, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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