Winter/Spring Small Group

Reflections on Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation What it is: This is an eight-session program that focuses on the impacts

of colonization on Indigenous peoples in Canada and our responses to it. It will be offered bi-weekly, from Feb. 13 to May 22. Enrollment is limited to 12 to 15 participants. Session Two, involving the Kairos blanket exercise, will be open to the Neighbourhood congregation. The program will be facilitated by NUUC members Moira MacDonald and Peter Marmorek, who have received training from the Canadian Unitarian Council. The program is based on the extensive work done by the CUC in their Truth, Healing and Reconciliation Reflection Guide. 

The program: The hope is that we will learn about Canadian histo-

ry and present realities and experience processes through which we can engage with this material on emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels. The material asks us to look outward, at a part of our history, and inwards, at our own social identities and relationship to this history. It concludes by focusing on what healing and reconciliation mean to us, and how we as Unitarian Universalists can build connections in solidarity with Indigenous peoples.

Three commitments: The program asks for commitments from its participants:

• to attend all eight of the sessions (7–9:30 pm on Tuesdays) • to do the readings or watch the prescribed films between sessions (about 1.5 hours per ses- sion). Speak to Peter or Moira if you don’t have Internet access for the films. • to contribute, if able, toward the costs of the program, at a suggested $30 per participant. These funds will be used to pay honoraria to the Indigenous teachers who will be part of the program. While we want to fairly compensate our guest teachers, we also do not want the cost to deter anyone from participating. Please speak to Peter or Moira for further information.

The goal: We believe this truth and reconciliation work is im-

portant both historically and spiritually, and lays the groundwork for future NUUC involvement. We need to learn our history to know how to move forward in a useful way, and we look forward to sharing this journey with you.