Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,
Massey College, University of Toronto
On Wednesday, I was given a tour of Massey College and taken to lunch in the dining hall by parishioner John Fraser, who was master of the college for nearly two decades, from 1995 to 2014. I felt at times as if I were being shown the storehouses of Hezekiah (cf. II Kings 20:13), though it would be more accurate to describe them as the secondary and tertiary reliquaries of Vincent Massey and Robertson Davies. My rhapsodic descriptions of these, however, will have to await a future Thurible letter (perhaps even next week’s, if you all behave yourselves). For now, I want to highlight what is, in my estimation, the jewel in the crown of that extraordinary place: the Chapel Royal, St. Catherine’s, with which the clergy of St. Thomas’s have had, as I understand it, a long association, given its proximity to us.
As one can read on the website linked to above: “On National Indigenous Peoples’ Day, June 21, 2017, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II bestowed a rare honour on St. Catherine’s Chapel at Massey College. She designated it a Chapel Royal in recognition of the sesquicentennial of Canada and the relationship between Massey College and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. In Anishinaabek, The Chapel Royal at Massey College is called Gi-Chi-Twaa Gimaa Kwe Mississauga Anishinaabek AName Amik (The Queen’s Anishinaabek Sacred Place), a name created by James Shawana, Anishinaabek language teacher at Lloyd S. King Elementary School in New Credit. With its new designation, the Chapel Royal will be used to acknowledge the history of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and its ratification through the 1764 Treaty of Niagara. The treaty, through its association with the Silver Covenant Chain of Friendship, represented a relationship of respect between Indigenous nations and the Crown in the Great Lakes Region.”
As a newcomer to Canada, I am learning as much as I can about the relationship between Canada, the Crown, and Indigenous Peoples. The word “acknowledgement” keeps coming up, and it is leading me to ask questions about what sort of acknowledgements are being made, and what these might mean.
My journey down this road was kickstarted last Saturday after Mass. I greeted a number of Altar Guild members and other parishioners hard at work cleaning the church and setting up for the First Sunday in Lent. One of these busy bees was Marlene Fader, who informed me that she had intended at Vestry this year to follow up on a motion she made at Vestry last year. The minutes of that meeting record:
“16. OTHER BUSINESS Marlene Fader moved that we propose to Fr Humphrey that the Indigenous lands upon which the parish of St Thomas’s Church is situated be acknowledged in the weekly Sunday leaflet, or the pulpit. Seconded by Michael Rowland. Carried.”
Apparently, part of the thinking behind the particular wording of the resolution was that the new rector (that would be yours truly), once he settled in, would need to follow a process for determining whether and (if so) what sort of land acknowledgment would be most appropriate. (There’s no one-size-fits-all language, as I’ve since discovered.) According to Marlene, it was felt by some in the parish leadership that this matter ought to wait until I could be involved in its implementation.
I am sorry to admit that this matter had not come to my attention before Marlene pointed it out (I had only skimmed the prior year’s minutes in preparing for this year’s Vestry), and I am grateful to her. This unfinished business, as I see it, concerns what constitutes appropriate ways for St. Thomas’s to acknowledge the truth and to demonstrate our desire for reconciliation and our resolve to act accordingly.
When I was first appointed here, a friend from the States recommended I take an online course about Indigenous Peoples. I am sorry to admit that I never made the time to do so. (I didn’t, in fact, make the time to indulge in any online courses over the many months of transition.) So I have to admit that I am woefully undereducated on the purpose and meaning of land acknowledgements, beyond a very general awareness.
I am aware that members of the Huron-Sussex Residents Association, which recently held its annual meeting via Zoom, encouraged dialogue between a developer and representatives of the Indigenous community in this area. Our neighbours challenged the developer to think about ways that the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada might be implemented in the development of their site. I’m interested in learning more about that initiative, which came about because neighbours a few doors down the street cared enough to put words into action.
Just across Bloor Street, near the Spadina TTC station, is the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, which, according to its website, “has been a leader in the building of a healthy and vibrant urban Indigenous community in Toronto” for over fifty years. I’ve yet to visit. Clearly, I have my work cut out for me.
Since land acknowledgements involve questions about how we use words to express our desire for truth and reconciliation, and our solidarity with marginalized people, it can’t just pay “lip service.” Our Lord himself warns against such an attitude. As we find in Isaiah 29:13, “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” In Matthew 15:8, Jesus quotes this verse against the hypocritical Pharisees. Jesus reminds us that if we are to do anything with true moral integrity, either corporately or as individuals, we must move beyond mere words. Our words are important, but they need to be backed up by meaningful and constructive action.
When thinking through an issue, I try to research not just the views of its advocates but also its critics. Here’s one example from another debate about language: I recently read an opinion piece by John McWhorter in The New York Times, entitled “Capitalizing ‘Black’ Isn’t Wrong. But It Isn’t That Helpful, Either.” John McWhorter is a Black professor of linguistics at Columbia University, who made a bit of a splash this past year with his newest book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Since Prof. McWhorter is an anti-racist Black American who criticizes the language that some of his fellow anti-racist activists use, he is often asked why he’s in the habit of capitalizing the word “Black” in his opinion pieces for The New York Times. He replies, “The truth is: I’m not. The New York Times’s house style, on the news side and the Opinion side, requires it, and that’s how it reads when this newspaper publishes. But the copy that I send in has ‘black’ styled with an old-school lowercase ‘b.’” He goes on to explain that he doesn’t object to the style because he doesn’t think it actually matters. It doesn’t make any substantive difference in the fight against racism. It’s purely rhetorical.
Of course, rhetoric has a purpose, which is to signal our values, and to the extent that such things as capitalizing “Black” and inserting land acknowledgements do this effectively, they don’t do any apparent harm, and may do much good in creating positive, supportive, safe atmospheres for marginalized people. But conservative critics such as Prof. McWhorter are concerned about the chilling effect that so-called “woke” or “politically correct” language can have on open debate and discussion. It can harden people’s hearts by pushing people’s buttons.
Now, I personally do not think the word “woke” itself is very helpful. It is used in a pejorative sense to caricature people whose ideas about power and language some of us find threatening. Nevertheless, Prof. McWhorter (or his editor) decided to use that loaded word in his book’s title, likely because as a rhetorical signifier, it carries emotional freight that will help Prof. McWhorter sell many copies of his book!
Let me be clear that I’m not trying to stake out any defined position on the question of land acknowledgements. But I do think it’s important from the outset to ask ourselves why we might do something, what its intended consequences are, and what its unintended consequences might be. Things are never as simple as they seem. I would like to think that we all have our hearts in the right place and that we are always speaking and acting in good faith, but when it comes to sensitive topics, the temptation to dehumanize the other is strong indeed. So we have to start by questioning our assumptions and defining our intentions, or else we run the risk of not doing or saying anything actually worth doing or saying.
All this is to say that I am happy to commit myself to explore with Corporation how best to proceed, and sometime after Easter would very much like to engage the St. Thomas’s community—that is, as many of our people, neighbours, and friends who are interested in doing so—in listening to and learning from each other. But I am not interested in endless chatter and meaningless gestures. Perhaps the Social Justice Committee will want to facilitate such an engagement. But I suspect its members will first have to decide for themselves whether such an initiative aligns with the committee’s mission, which as I understand it is to stand in solidarity with the poor and to take meaningful action in the lives of individuals and communities that convert the hearts and minds not only of those whom we serve, but of everyone who is engaged in the work of social justice and reconciliation. I won’t presume to speak for members of Corporation or any committee. For now, I’ll just add this to the Advisory Board agenda. That seems like the best place to begin any formal process. My intent here is merely to raise the question publicly, as a way of beginning to address the intention behind the motion passed at last year’s Vestry.
In the meantime, my own education continues. A cursory internet search turned up the University of Toronto’s protocol regarding land acknowledgements. That seemed to me a good place to start, since we occupy the same native lands that the campus occupies. U of T undertook, as I expected it would, extensive “consultation with First Nations House and the Elders Circle, some scholars in the field, and senior University officials.” It developed its own acknowledgement, which you can read on its web page, and a specific policy: “The protocol for using the statement is: [The] Statement of Acknowledgement of Traditional Land [is] to be used at specific university ceremonies such as Convocation, Groundbreakings, and Building Openings…and is available to all members of the University community for use at University events as appropriate.”
The takeaway for me is that U of T recognizes that some language, if overused, loses its significance. It becomes lip service. In order for our language to accomplish what we hope it will, it needs to be used in the appropriate contexts, backed up by the appropriate actions.
One of the things I love about St. Thomas’s is that it is full of people who care about language. I am seeing this right now in our Lenten study on Psalms 51 and 22, “Let Scripture Speak,” which I am co-teaching with parishioner John Stuart on Wednesday evenings. And this has been true of the parish, perhaps since its founding. Some, like Katherine Barber, have already gone to their reward, while many others continue to reward us with their presence and intelligence.
When I read what the University of Toronto wrote about using its land acknowledgment at groundbreakings and building openings, it immediately resonated with me, as I hope that at some point in the not-too-distant future we will break ground on the proposed accessibility link now being discussed. The link will integrate several features that will enable it to serve as the cornerstone project for all other projects we undertake in my tenure, and quite possibly beyond. I can well imagine an appropriate land acknowledgement featuring in accessibility link’s groundbreaking ceremony, and, upon completion, at the consecration service. But if we are to do that, it must be truly meaningful. Consultation and cooperation with the local First Nations community would, I hope, be a part of that.
In thinking through these questions around truthful language, solidarity, meaningful action, and reconciliation, we do no one any favours by rushing to write something without thoroughly contemplating and communicating its meaning. I am grateful to Marlene for bringing this resolution to my attention, and I am committed to undertaking a process that will honour the intention that motivated it in the first place.
Yours in Christ’s service,
N.J.A. Humphrey+
VIII Rector