There is a danger, which you might already have noticed, that the phrase “what did not reach us” can be seen as absolving us from any more prayer or action related to the history of Quaker involvement in the Indian boarding schools. “What did not reach us” is passive. When in actuality, knowledge was withheld and harms were done.
I have been trying to find a mechanism to get Quakers to move past trigger words that result in shutting down any real discussion of the issues. Unfortunately, that probably worked because nothing more was being asked.
What is needed is to bridge “what did not reach us” to “and therefore, this.” Ask the hard, uncomfortable questions:
After we are moved by these stories, what are we being asked to relinquish?
- Is it land?
- Is it money?
- Is it our comfort?
- Is it the cherished story of our own moral goodness?
My friend Sikowis Nobiss, founder of the Great Plains Action Society, has said:
…She (Sikowis) has spoken to congregations — Mennonites, Quakers, Catholic Workers, and others — and in nearly every conversation, she says, she hears ‘a cocktail of white guilt combined with a desire to be in proximity to Indigenous folks’ that leads only to more inaction. Giving land back, she reminds us, is the single most powerful thing settlers with inherited wealth can do — and almost none of those conversations have ever led to it.
After the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March that I walked on with Sikowis, she answered my question, “what can I do?”, with the assignment that shaped my years since: learn and teach LANDBACK. My teaching is in part done by writing blog posts like this. At the time Sikowis said that, I created the blog LANDBACK Friends
Subsequent blogs I created and have written on about these subjects are:
Undo the Machinery of Not-Reaching
I’ll continue to pray and write about these things. And I’ll do my best to fulfill what I am asked to do by the Spirit. I’ll continue to work with the Decolonial Repair Network, and the Great Plains Action Society. To show up when I can when invited to work at the GPAS’s Urban Resilience Hub.
Sikowis speaking as we began the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March in Des Moines, September 1, 2018
Channels Into Knowledge 
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