St. Agnes Catholic Community in Louisville has something to say responding to the "signs of the times," specifically about racial justice. With leadership from parishioner Fred Meirose and support from Fr. Justin Nelson, C.P., Pastor and Fr. Febin Barose, C.P. Parochial Vicar, and others, the community compiled this resource with contributions from throughout the parish including K-8 students, parishioners, and staff. It is quite remarkable and a model of how these conversations can be both challenging and inspirational in a mostly white, middle class U.S. Catholic parish. Download the booklet here (ready for printing and and folding 5 1/2 x 8 1/2) or Download a high resolution version here.
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Approaching the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and the myth of the "first" dinner with native peoples providing the potluck, we might pause to think about those people who lived, literally everywhere on the continent before settlers arrived. Let's sit with this thought about the land we have lived on and who lived there before us.
The Native Land Digital website is an amazing mapping project and so much more. While you can explore the maps for a long while, it does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations, it is a work in progress. It's beauty is that the maps and interpretation grows in accuracy and detail with the involvement of native peoples and communities collaborating with GPS and mapping professionals and anthropologists and native historians. Further, it is beautiful as a learning experience to be shared with friends and family in discussion. Native Land Digital is a Canadian not-for-profit organization, incorporated in December 2018. Native Land Digital is Indigenous led, with an Indigenous Executive Director and Board of Directors who oversee and direct the organization. The maps are most developed for the Americas, Australasia and parts of North Asia. The mission of the project is to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, through educational resources such as the map and Territory Acknowledgement Guide. They want to go beyond old ways of talking about Indigenous people and to develop a platform where Indigenous communities can represent themselves and their histories on their own terms. In doing so, Native Land Digital creates spaces where non-Indigenous people can be invited and challenged to learn more about the lands they inhabit, the history of those lands, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together. Action: 1. Spend time with the map first Expect an amazing "rabbit hole" of learning! 2. Learn about why it matters and how it works on their website. 3. Go back to map and imagine with new eyes. "A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power. This is what consumer movements accomplish by boycotting certain products. They prove successful in changing the way businesses operate, forcing them to consider their environmental footprint and their patterns of production. When social pressure affects their earnings, businesses clearly have to find ways to produce differently. This shows us the great need for a sense of social responsibility on the part of consumers. “Purchasing is always a moral – and not simply economic – act”.[146] Today, in a word, “the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle”.[147] (Laudato Si' 206) An international grassroots effort beginning to develop and grow is called the Glasgow Agreement. The Agreement believes that genuine "people power" will create the political and economic will to make the changes needed to save the planet and her people. The climate justice movement "cannot be stopped by the global narrative of institutional impotence." The framework for this movement is defined as a "social and political demand that advocates for the redistribution of power, knowledge and wellbeing. It proposes a new notion of prosperity within natural limits and just resource distribution, advocating for a true connection between traditional and westernized knowledge systems. It calls for a public and participatory science to address the needs of humanity and of the earth, principally to stop the climate crisis." Question: How can we heal our integral ecology as individuals or small groups in the face of international inaction and corporate resistance? Actions:
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