Unceded Territory

Today I had the chance to give an interview with Kwantlen’s student newspaper, “The Runner”. The inside front page offers a short description on their name:

“The Runner recognizes that our work, both in and out of the office, takes place on unceded Coast and Strait Salish territories, specifically the shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Sto:lo and Tsawwassen First Nations. Our name is inspired by the hun’qumi’num meaning of Kwantlen, which is tireless hunters or tireless runners. Just as Kwantlen is adaptable and changing so is The Runner.”

“Unceded” means that no formal treaty has been signed, no agreement has been reached between the First and Second nations occupying the same land. We ought to remain attentive to this; Christianity was deeply implicated in colonial expansion which sometimes took an aggressive form. This doesn’t mean we should feel unbearable shame and romanticize about North America free from the infiltration of Christian or colonial influence. But we do need to confess our implication in what was and still is a painful journey for First Nation’s people across the continent.

I feel a bit like a “runner” right now myself (though I can’t really claim to be “tireless”). This interview with the student newspaper is another attempt at reaching out (“running” into) to this university community, spreading awareness about the Multi-Faith Centre and my Christian chaplaincy working out of it. These attempts have been rather scattered and seemingly unrelated: coffees and lunches with staff and students, l meetings with Multi-Faith centre staff, some regular conversations with particular students, a bit of low-key programming (a weekly ‘tea-time’ at the Multi-Faith Centre office). Right now I can’t really see a deep connection or continuity between my efforts; they are rather scattered, which makes the ‘running around’ metaphor an appropriate one.

I acknowledge, though, that I am on unceded territory, both in an official sense regarding our First Nation’s communities, but also in a broader sense of trying to set up camp in a somewhat foreign territory. The aggression of some colonialism is not to be recommended on this score. I am tentatively trying to set up a temporary shelter, a spiritual oasis where I can receive and welcome travelers with the hospitality of Jesus. “I am not of this World,” Jesus said (John 8:23). In acknowledging our pilgrim journey through our lives we realize that absolute comfort and homecoming is not for us to establish in the World, in separation from God. Instead, we make our home in Christ himself. By doing so, we are invited to care for people, the land, creation itself in a way that offers a place of rest and sanctuary that is real, but not of the world; it is of God. It points to the end of all creation making its home in God and God in it, resting in the divine nature and freed from “the world”, freed from separation from God.

In that sense, as Christians we are runners, “running the race, pressing on towards the goal” as Paul put it. I will keep ‘running’ around on this ‘unceded’ territory, as a stranger in the world, attempting to offer hospitality and rest in Christ, who is not of the world either. I won’t do it perfectly. Sometimes this ‘unceded territory’ will be a place where I regretfully push my own agenda and try to set up a firm foundation on my own. But by being attentive to the pilgrim life of Jesus we can be drawn back into a journey that calls us to hospitality and peace against a world that all too often interprets ‘unceded’ as ‘empty for domination’. In opposition to this, we as Christ’s follows must reverse this interpretation, and instead offer ourselves to God’s service.