Second Fridays – The Context of the Land

Second Fridays – The Context of the Land

Videos from September’s Second Friday!

Second Fridays at CCS is back for its third year, and once again we are partnering with the Sandy Saulteaux Spiritual Centre to bring you aboriginal and non-aboriginal voices addressing themes of spiritual and political importance to us all.

On Sept. 12th we were invited to re-connect our faith to our natural context, the land.  Melanie Kampen unpacked the biblical image of “living water” and Stan McKay encouraged us to move beyond an anthropocentric theology that is like a potted plant, never rooting itself in its natural setting.  Through storytelling and exegesis, Melanie and Stan sparked deep reflection on “The Context of the Land.“

Like what you see?  Why not check out some of the past Second Fridays videos.  Or join us next month, when guests Sue Eagle and a representative from the Manitoba Treaty Relations Commission will explore the concept of “All My Relations.”

Stan McKay is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, and served as Moderator from 1992 to 1994, the first Indigenous person to lead a mainline denomination in Canada. Stan has been director of the Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Resource Centre in Beausejour, Manitoba, director of Spiritual Care at Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, and First Nations advisor on Education, Health and Development in Manitoba. He is known widely as a wise teacher and elder, striving to educate Canadians about the consequences of colonialism in Canada, and especially the policy of assimilation and residential schools, and to bring about healing to the deep harm caused to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians alike.

Melanie Kampen is a student in the Masters of Theological Studies program at Conrad Grebel University College in conjunction with the University of Waterloo. She is currently working on her thesis, which seeks to interrogate the dominant doctrine of original sin in Western Christian theology with alternative and decolonizing readings of Gen. 3 and Rom. 5 from Native Christian theologians. She is also involved in several local initiatives for Indigenous-settler solidarity. Besides reading and writing, Kampen enjoys traveling, learning languages, and playing the violin.