Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont., is one of four churches in Canada committed to paying reparations to Indigenous communities for occupying their ancestral land. In July 2024, the church made its first reparation payment of $4,000, equivalent to one percent of its annual budget, to Six Nations Polytechnic, a post-secondary institution in Brantford.
Pam Albrecht, a member of the church’s spiritual covenant group, emphasized the importance of acknowledging and repairing the harm caused by past wrongs. This payment is part of the church’s ongoing journey toward reconciliation, with plans for further action.
The initiative traces back to 2007, when Adrian Jacobs, a member of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy, proposed a spiritual covenant between Canadian churches and Indigenous communities. Jacobs highlighted the historical context of land leasing agreements that were never honored and sees these reparations as a step toward addressing the inequities that have persisted for over 150 years.
Other Mennonite churches in Winnipeg have followed suit, each contributing a portion of their budgets to local Indigenous organizations. This collective effort is seen as a meaningful step in fostering reconciliation and building mutually beneficial relationships between churches and Indigenous communities.
