#churchlandback Canada: Part 6
church property returned to nations: portion returns
What does maple syrup have to do with #churchlandback? Read on to find out.
On a March day in a little maple grove in Kitchener, Ontario, elders and youth gather to empty buckets and tend to the boiling down of sap that will later be distributed within the community. Those present are part of the White Owl Native Ancestry Association, an urban Indigenous organization connecting people back to the land and practices that sustain the land and the people.
This 10.5-acre maple grove is the site of a #landback initiative and is an example others could consider following.
I refer to this type of #landback situation as a “portion return.” In these cases, the land is not currently being put to any other use, no one is displaced, and it has probably sat unused for a long time. In fact, property ownership may have even fallen out of recent memory.
In the case of this particular property, the United Church purchased it in the 1960s to build a church building on it. A rare salamander habitation prevented that development from happening, and the land was largely forgotten until 2016. A local United Church's youth initiative made a connection between the church and White Owl. The need for land to carry out the programming they wanted came up in conversation. Eventually, it occurred to someone that this land could serve White Owl. In 2017, the land was legally transferred, but a relationship also has been growing between the two communities. What may come of that relationship in an ongoing way is yet to be seen.
In conversations, especially with denominational leaders, an accounting of land records could be a starting point for some # churchlandback initiatives. Where are there properties in church possession that are not being utilized? Are there opportunities to return those lands to the nations who originally stewarded them or perhaps even to an urban Indigenous organization like White Owl?
These types of land transfers should constitute very “low-hanging fruit” in the #churchlandback scenario. But, even more important than finding and returning these properties, how can these be occasions for deeper relationships where there is openness to that? In the words of Rev. Jenn Hind-Urquhart, the minister at the church closest to what is now the White Owl property,
How do we take that one step further and actually work to reconcile relationships and listen to the painful stories, listen to our painful history and ask Indigenous people how they would like to be walked with because our history is so much one of domination and colonization?1
Next week, we will examine a significantly more costly scenario and profoundly inspirational.