RACIAL JUSTICE WORKING GROUP

• Meets every 4th Tuesday @ 6:45 pm in Westminster Room
• Advocates for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging in the local public school system
• Participates in the Friends of Palestinian Detainees pilot program
• Fosters our developing relationship with our indigenous friends of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa & Chippewa Indians through the PLACE series & other programming
• Encourages our congregation to engage in antiracism education and action
• Reflects PCTC’s Matthew 25 Commitment
• Contact Rachel Starkenburg or Gail Lanphear to learn more or get involved.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The land upon which our church building stands is home to the Anishinaabek peoples, specifically the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Bodewadmi tribes. We are grateful to them for their stewardship of this land and the Lake Michigan watershed for centuries. We honor their sacred beliefs both past and present, with which they live their lives; these help to bring us all into right relationship with God’s creation.

In 1493 a Papal decree aimed to justify Christian European settlers’ claims on lands and waterways they allegedly discovered. This ultimately resulted in legal justification for the continued land theft that built the United States (Johnson vs. M’Intosh, 1823). In 1839 the Presbyterian denomination sent the Rev. Peter Dougherty to Michigamme to found a congregation and school for native people. Sadly, this contributed to removal of Indigenous people from this land, and aided the establishment of white, Christian dominance of the Grand Traverse area, including monetary gain and land ownership claims.

We lament the violence of all our spiritual ancestors upon the Indigenous people and the land and the water of this region. We apologize for these harms and seek repair and reparations for the sake of future generations.

As individuals and as a congregation, we vow to commit ourselves to consciously identify and acknowledge that the land we find ourselves on is not ours to own. We affirm that while we cannot change history, we can work toward justice. Justice begins with recognition and acknowledgment of past and ongoing colonization. And so, we commit our time, energy and resources toward engaging with Indigenous people in a mutual effort to enrich all life together on God’s earth.