Bringing Peace and Justice Issues to the Podium
“According to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, ‘thousands of students suffered physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. All suffered from loneliness and a longing to be home with their families.’ Mennonites were directly complicit in and responsible for the running of a number of these schools.” Sophia Kauffman shared these words with a predominantly American audience at Peace Talks in September.
As a second-year Peace and Conflict Studies and Political Science student at Conrad Grebel University College and the University of Waterloo, she has been learning more about Canadian Indigenous people and cultures, and wrestling with her own ingrained assumptions. “I titled this speech ‘Sitting with Our Shame’ because I believe that this is exactly what we as a church need to do. The first step is to find the shame,” she said in her speech. “Once we find that place, we then have to do the even harder thing. We have to sit there, sit with the shame and guilt of what we’ve done. Listen to the stories of those we have hurt. Realize that our church has so, so far to go in our work towards reconciliation. And then, even harder, we have to act.”