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Love Your Neighbour

Love your Neighbour. Jesus said it was one of the core competencies of followers of his way.

But what if you’ve spent a lifetime hearing false information about that neighbour? If your “story” of your neighbour is filled with ignorance, and from that ignorance, judgement? How do you love a neighbour who you can’t even see clearly? Isn’t that the hardest neighbour to love?

And I think that is why it’s taken us so long to do a Love Your Native Neighbour interview, because we don’t know our native neighbours. As I prepared for this interview I learned that basically everything I “knew” about my native neighbours turned out to be either grossly exaggerated, or just flat out wrong. When I told my friends about what I was learning, they couldn’t believe me, or maybe a better way of describing it is, they wouldn’t believe me. Why are we so attached to our “story” of our native neighbour?

So this interview is a long time in coming. And for western Canadians, loving our native neighbor might just be one of the most complex things we have to deal with. And yet, I think there is huge potential to be more loving to our native neighbors, because to be honest, I don’t think we are doing a very good job of it.

This Sunday you’ll hear the story of a woman from the Piikani Nation. She is going to share about her life as a native woman. Some of her story is heartbreaking. Some of her story might break your “story”. So come and join us. Bring your friends who also think they know their native neighbour, because if you’re anything like me you don’t actually know many native people. And that lack of knowing, allows for our “stories”. This one you don’t want to miss.

Due to licensing restrictions we were not able to record this message, we encourage you to check out the links below to learn more about our native neighbours.

http://westcoastnativenews.com/held-in-trust/

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/07/29/disclosure_of_first_nations_salaries_raises_eyebrows.html

 

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