We Europeans took three-thousand years to evolve from a hunter-gatherer society to a modern industrial society, but we expect the North American aboriginals to make that transition in two or three generations.

I think what we all, and especially the churches, should be doing is, first of all, to acknowledge and respect and learn from the ancient wisdom of our aboriginal people and cultures, a wisdom that is lost to us because we lost it three-thousand years ago.

Then, from this level of newfound admiration and respect, we can, in cooperation with them, ease their transition into modern or post-modern 21st century society.

What I, personally, am in favour of is a cultural synthesis between indigenous Canadian culture and European-Canadian culture into a genuinely Canadian culture.

Well, churches should be against racism of course. Then again, everyone else should be as well. There needs to be some kind of educational program go on. No one in the church should be racist. I thought this was well understood by now.

Racism carries many disguises.  At the same time, we need to acknowledge that there is a class war going on right now which is targeted at all those who are not in at least the top 10% of the welathy.  Attacks on poor First Nations leadership takes headlines away from the looting of the public purse by the Conservative Government and their friends.  Attacks on environmentalists, unions, and professions like teachers, doctors and scientists are part of this mostly one-sided class war that has been going on for at least 2 decades. 

Church members need to be alerted to the signs of racism: patronizing language, stereotypes, rationalizations justifying privileges by the speaker's group, etc.  They also need to learn our history, and examine how our predecessors justified that history so we can be alert to the same kind of thinking.

As the Idle No More speaker at last night's presbytery meeting said, we are all treaty people.  We need to understand what that means to each of us.

The brutality of the Conservative Government serves to intimidate potential critics.  I only wish the Chretien government had not established precedents for govt. brutality.

Racism is rooted in a lack of respect for other people. Lack of respect is then compounded by fear and ignorance, and a good measure of rrationality.

I  have experienced some superb teaching circles led by native people in churches. Anyone taking part in such a session would go away impressed with the condct and the content of some of these teaching circles.

Bu I have also heard of ministers being told that their congregations don't want to hear about "Indians"… 

I have heard it called a "political" issue that shouldn't be raised in church. I don't see this as a "political" issue at all… it's a huiman decency issue, it's a deeply Christian issue.

My view is that churches should be very active in awareness and anti-racism intitiatives.

What churches need to do about racism, shares many of the barriers that are also faced when dealing sexism, able-ism, and homophobia.  So in my opinion, these things can be dealt with together as well as seperately..

All require us to have empathy for those different from us. This requires education, and I believe that much of the  Affirming process can be borrowed and adapted for fighting racism, et al.

Like homophobia, much of racism, et al, involve fear, as Mike says.  Fear is something nthat should be and is often dealt with through our rituals.

fighting Racism et al, requires an understanding of change and forgiveness. If we understand that forgiveness is available, we should find it easier to admit to (and see)  the sin of racism, as well as other sins that we are responsible for.