Geez

Geez

Have you seen Geez Magazine?  I bet you’d like it.

The fall issue of the “quarterly, ad-free magazine for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable” focuses on Decolonization.

And it features a few of our favourite guest speakers from CCS’s Second Fridays series: The Decolonization Issue of Geez was guest edited by Leah Gazan and Steve Heinrichs, and has articles by Stan McKay and Niigan Sinclair.

In his article on Decommissioning, Stan McKay says:

In this generation, churches have an opportunity to deal with “their own stuff.” Churches have the chance to engage with the settlers who hold membership in their institutions. Churches have nothing to say to the colonized until they manage their own healing. During these hard days the institutional churches could examine how they are impacted by aggressive, rampant capitalism. How would it bring its members to discuss reparation and reciprocity?

In the introduction to the editors, Steve Heinrichs defines colonialism not as an event but as a structure.

It’s not simply a history which we’re trying to become aware of and lament and then move toward respectful relationships. It is a structure, so that means this relationship continues. It means fundamentally reworking our relationship into a place of mutuality and respect.

And Leah Gazan says:

Sometimes it’s just about sitting and watching and not asking and just quietly learning. Because if you don’t have that relationship, you can’t be an ally. If you don’t know anything about a person, then you can’t care about them.

In his article Treaty is a Gift, Niigan Sinclair says that treaties are the fabric of Creation…

… binding all living things together in a vast and complete network of relationships. They are intricate ties that must be visited and re-visited, maintained and fortified, and can – with enough care and concern – become virtually indestructible.

This is why treaties produce family, not friends. Family is for life.