Today is Canada Day. I’m sincerely grateful for the privilege of raising my young family in Canada. I and my family experienced relative peace there compared to where I grew up. While being grateful, my consciousness about the historical injustices suffered by the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island is growing. My awakening was prompted by my interaction with the Indigenous Peoples here in the Philippines. This reflection was sparked by the paintings of Kent Monkman.
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/07/01/my-sin-of-omission-ignoring-historical-injustices-committed-against-canadas-indigenous-peoples/
With much gratitude to Afunyan—our Creator, Tala fulfilled all her academic requirements and earned the Master of Arts degree in Conflict Transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia, USA. Her thesis topic, “Decolonizing and Localizing Peacebuilding Through a For-Profit Social Enterprise: The Story of Coffee for Peace and PeaceBuilders Community,” helps us see a clearer picture of our journey at PBCI and CFP.
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/06/19/tala-completes-her-masters-degree-from-emus-center-for-justice-peacebuilding/
The murder of George Floyd shocked and traumatized us! This brought back memories of what the American military did to our people at the beginning of the 20th century. They killed hundreds of thousands of our people in the process of colonizing our archipelago. Our people experienced systemic racism in our own native land. The lamentations of our elders and the psychosocial trauma surfaced again. This is our expression of lamentation, outrage, and global cry for radical transformation against systemic racism and supremacist states.
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/06/08/george-floyd-brings-back-the-lamentations-of-our-elders-when-the-u-s-colonized-our-islands/
The danger of conspiracy theories is their ability to breed apathy and resignation, offering an easy narrative that makes people susceptible to influence and limits social change. When those around us fall prey to these theories, we need to develop frameworks that offer sustainable forms of material, psychological and spiritual care; and, we can provide a genuine sense of security—grounded in healthy, thriving communities of friends, lovers, families and comrades.
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/05/25/beneath-the-conspiracy-theories-the-class-war/
This is my expression of support to the call of my Palestinian Christian brother and friend, The Rev. Dr. Jack Sara. “I have already written several articles on this subject, expressing how so many of those so-called ‘Evangelical leaders’ have not been helpful in achieving peace here,” he laments. “As we mark the seventy-second year of the nakba,” he adds, “I call upon Christians around the world to help us say enough of the injustice and to join us in prophetically speaking against systems that instill suffering and strife on a weak and almost helpless people.”
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/05/15/i-support-my-palestinian-sisters-and-brothers-as-we-commemorate-the-72nd-year-of-al-nakba/
ProducePeace+ buys fruits and vegetables directly from farmers at justice-based prices. They sell them to solidarity markets mostly belonging to upper-middle class families. They use a big chunk of their net profit to provide nutritious food relief for the urban poor. ProducePeace+ is building a justice-based relationship between socio-economic divide through social enterprise. This opens a way towards conscientization, transformation, and healing of both the people and the land.
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/05/08/in-the-midst-of-covid19-crisis-a-new-social-enterprise-is-born/
We have to accept and face the new reality. The on-going threat of a global pandemic is the ‘now normal’ and we’ll learn how to be resilient as we live with it. No, this is not a defeatist attitude. We’re being like normal Filipinos. We face some 20 typhoons a year that devastate our lives and livelihood. After each typhoon, we get up. We count our loses—lives and properties. We receive relief. We rebuild. We move on. Then we get ready for the next typhoon. This is life. We cry. We get angry. But we also make jokes about this life and laugh about it.
Permanent link to this article: https://waves.ca/2020/04/17/were-gearing-ourselves-up-to-face-the-pandemic-threat-as-the-new-normal/
We are sent by Mennonite Church Canada Witness in partnership with our international community.
