"When it comes to tracking the process of healing, spreadsheets and metrics aren't all that useful. It takes someone like Esther Wesley, the Anglican Fund for Healing and Reconciliation ("AHF") co-ordinator, to sense when healing starts to happen. Wesley's face lights up when she talks about Aboriginal Neighbours, a group of volunteers on Vancouver Island with a practical, authentic approach to bringing together indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Aboriginal Neighbours is one of 494 projects that have received AHF grants. Founded in 1991, the AHF now uses funds raised by dioceses in order to comply with the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement of 2006. So far, the fund has distributed more than $5 million to projects addressing the legacy of residential schools". "Wesley says AHF's work is fundamentally the same as that of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission: to educate people about residential schools and bring people together. It's hard and painful work sometimes, but for her, Aboriginal Neighbours stands as a slow and steady example of how healing can happen. 'We need more of that people-to-people contact', Wesley says. 'It's about recognizing each other, sharing culture and stories and being people of God'."
Eight page insert (1-8) with May 2013 issue of Anglican Journal. Anglican Church of Canada Ministry Report. Insert produced by Resources for Mission Dept.
" [Esther] Wesley, along with Anglican Church of Canada reconciliation animator Melanie Delva, spent two weeks in December [2017] travelling with Bishop David Parsons, of the diocese of the Arctic, to communities on the Ungava Peninsula, in Nunavik, northern Quebec. In Kangirsuk, an Inuit village in northern Nunavik, community member Zebedee Nungak presented the two women with a jug of water. They soon found out that for Zebedee to collect this gift meant travelling upwards of 17 kilometres. Water in Kangirsuk typically comes from a nearby lake, about five kilometres away, but rising temperatures have caused ice to freeze less deeply and become contaminated by silt. The community has running water, says Zebedee's wife, Jeannie Nungak, but the taste is not as good. 'There are more minerals than there used to be ... the taste is difference for tea or coffee'. This is one of the many daily impacts of climate change on Canada's North. 'It's not a theory up in this part of the world', says Parsons. 'We're the canary in the mine'" (p. 6). "When Delva and Wesley visited in mid-December [2017], Ungava Bay hadn't yet frozen. For communities that fish on this ice, and travel across it to hunting grounds, it's more than an inconvenience. 'People are dying trying to get to the hunting ground', says Delva" (p. 10).
"Healing Fund co-ordinator Esther Wesley told CoGS that, as of June 22 [2017] Giving with Grace, the Anglican Church of Canada's annual fundraising campaign, had raised $26,000 in money directly designated for the fund, which supports Indigenous healing projects. Funds collected without any specific designation totalled $249,000, Wesley said. ... Thus a total of $275,000 has been raised for the fund by Giving with Grace to date in 2017. In 2015, Giving with Grace raised $515,000". "A key focus for the fund remains keeping Indigenous languages alive, as many of them reach a critical point in their existence". "Reconciliation was the theme of a number of sessions at the meeting of CoGS. On June 24 [2017], Melanie Delva, named the church's reconciliation animator last April [2017], gave a presentation introducing her role. Much of it, she said, would consist in 'forming, equipping and resourcing a national team to encourage and sustain local engagement in the work of reconciliation".
That this Council of General Synod congratulates National Church staff members Dr. Eleanor Johnson, Rev. Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan and Mrs. Esther Wesley, and Archbishop David Crawley in being honoured as recipients of honourary Doctor of Divinity degrees at the respective Spring 2006 convocations of Montreal Diocesan College; Trinity College, Toronto; Huron College, London, and the Vancouver School of Theology. CARRIED #07-05-06
"A former student of the Elkhorn Indian Residential School, set up by an Anglican missionary in 1888, has donated $50,000 -- $40,000 of which was his entire settlement from the revised residential schools agreement -- to an inner city homeless shelter in Winnipeg. 'I'm hoping for the best for the people', William Woodford, 85, told reporters who heard of his generous act and showed up at Siloam Mission when he delivered the bank draft on March 2 [2009]". "In a related development, the Anglican Church of Canada, along with other churches, is urging the government to declare the month between May 26 and June 21 (National Aboriginal Day), as a month of healing and reconciliation to help Canadians focus on the 150-year legacy of forced assimilation through the Indian residential schools". "Meanwhile, former students and representatives of the churches that are signatory to the revised Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) gathered for a round table meeting in Ottawa March 23 [2009] and agreed to the importance of having a ceremony for the new Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) members who will be appointed. Esther Wesley, indigenous healing co-ordinator of the Anglican church's partnerships department who attended the meeting, said the view was expressed that the IRSSA is 'more than an agreement; it is a spiritual covenant' that involved aboriginal communities across Canada'."