[Plea to Strengthen and Support Training of Indian and Eskimo Peoples for the Ministry]
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/official5127
- Date
- 1972 November 10
- Source
- Anglican News Service
- Type
- Press Release
- Text of motion
- Archdeacon Donald Whitbread, a 22-year veteran in the Arctic, wants the Anglican Church of Canada to strengthen and support training of Indian and Eskimo peoples for the ministry.
- It is likely the church will, because of a plea he made yesterday before the National Executive Council of the General Synod. The council's committee on ministry is charged with developing a plan for co-ordination and supervision.
- "In the past 10 years 10 Eskimo priests have been ordained, and in the past 25 years about 25 Indians have been ordained in the whole of Canada," he said.
- "That's nowhere good enough. I'm convinced that the program we are doing in the Diocese of the Arctic is badly needed in other parts of Canada among Indian peoples."
- The Arctic operates a training school for Eskimos at Pangnirtung, 200 miles north of Frobisher and 10 miles south of the Arctic Circle. But it is not doing it alone. Two other dioceses, south of the Arctic but north of main population areas, are operating a school for Indian candidates - and doing it independently.
- "There should be some coordination," he said. No diocese can afford to go it alone on projects like this, in this age of sharing our experiences, sharing our needs and sharing our problems."
- "Hopefully," he said, "the church will develop an inter-diocesan group to co-ordinate studies and, perhaps, act as an accrediting board for the standards of native clergy training schools.",
- In the Diocese of the Arctic, which stretches across the roof of Canada from the Yukon to the North Atlantic, 95 percent of the Anglican population are Eskimo-speaking. It's a standard that all clergy have to be bilingual to serve both the native people and the English-speaking communities. Of the 14,000 Eskimos, 10-11,000 are Anglican.
- At Pangnirtung, nearly all lectures are given in Eskimo. The exceptions are couched in simple English.
- "Bringing them south to college likely wouldn't work at this stage," he said. "The schools of theology are moving more and more to graduate work, and it would be too difficult for people with little formal education."
- "They don't speak technically but, being adults, they can think very deeply in their own tongue. Theology and doctrine must be related to the everyday situations the person will meet, and church history must be meaningful from the person's culture and viewpoint."
- Archdeacon Whitbread, who used to travel 2,000 miles a years by dogsled "to get around my parish," still flies 1,600 miles south to Montreal periodically to visit parishioners in hospital and bring the news from home.
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- For further information, contact:
- Michael O'Meara, Director
- Division of Communications
- 924-9192 (Bus.)
- 742-8327 (Res.)
- Subjects
- Indigenous peoples - Canada - Anglican Church of Canada
- Indigenous clergy - Anglican Church of Canada
- Inuit - Canada - Anglican Church of Canada
- Theological education - Anglican Church of Canada
- Multiculturalism - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Anglican Church of Canada. Diocese of the Arctic
- Whitbread, Donald (Donald Henry), 1926-1978