June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada, and it has been an eye-opening one for many of us as settlers as we have been forced to reckon with a history that we have tried to keep at arm's length. As a community at Commons, we have been invested in an effort to learn the truth about our history for the past several years. Programs like the Blanket Exercise have begun to educate us, and we look forward to when those experiences can resume.

However, while we are committed to the journey of truth and everything we still have to learn, it's also time for us to take our responsibility for reconciliation seriously. Therefore, beginning this month, we will be committing a percentage of our budget to reconciliation efforts on an ongoing basis.

The first of two contributions will be to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society that works to provide care and healing for those injured by our colonial past. The second will contribute to the Aboriginal friendships Centre of Calgary, which works to remove barriers and empower the urban Indigenous community through cultural reconnection, and resources to address the social and economic realities of Indigenous people in the city.

This $10,000 first step, $5000 to each organization, will be offered humbly and with no strings attached. We want to step away from any form of paternalism in our relationships. But we hope that as we continue to offer ourselves freely, on an ongoing basis, with a learning posture, we can begin to grow the types of friendships that will please the God that reconciles all things.

May we become agents of repair in the world.
May we heal what we have broken.
May we trust that God is renewing all things in heaven and on earth.

For more information, visit:
http://irsss.ca
https://www.afccalgary.org