2025 Commencement Address: "A Journey of Indigenous Values and Spirituality Today"

Delivered on May 18th, 2025 by Judith Moses (SSU's Kahn-Tineta)

On behalf of the board of governors, I would like to congratulate St. Stephen’s University’s 2025 graduates.  I am so proud of you. You have worked hard and have thrived in the safe space that SSU has tried to create for you. I hope a corner of your heart will always be here. And know that you will always be welcomed back here if you ever need a spiritual haven and a loving, caring community.

Let me also thank Chief Akagi for being with us today and welcoming us onto the traditional lands of the Peskotomuhkati people. It is always a great honour to host the Chief on the  SSU campus. He has inspired many generations of learners here and has been one of our biggest supporters over the years. And he is a living testament to his people’s commitment to the original treaty of peace and friendship that covers these traditional lands. His actions honour the spirit and intent of that treaty and he has spent his entire adult life taking active steps to reshape the colonial relationship here. And he has been masterful in combining his western marine science education with traditional knowledge and wisdom.

Thank you Chief Akagi for all that you do.

Chief Akagi and I come from different parts of Canada, but Indigenous people across Turtle island share a special kinship, even though our languages, customs and ceremonies and values are different and our treaty terms differ.

• We all honour the land and waters and see ourselves as interconnected and living in harmony with nature with humans being only one part of Creation.

• We strive for harmony and balance within our communities and with nature.

• Our origin stories differ but we mostly honour a single Creator or Great Spirit.

• We honour and respect our Elders for their wisdom and guidance. They are our ultimate authorities.

• We honour our ancestors as well as the children of future generations in our actions and the 7 Grandfather teachings generally  guide us on the good road.

• We recognize our languages as a gift, a gateway to understanding who we are. I could go on.

I was asked to talk to you today about the uplifting topic of decolonization. It’s a huge field and something where St. Stephen’s University is determined to make an impact.

You may be aware that Great Britain imposed a patrilineal system of governance over our mostly traditional matrilineal systems, so traditionally, I would be Mohawk as was my maternal grandmother who was instead Tuscarora by marriage. She knew her language but only spoke it quietly with friends as speaking our traditional languages was banned by the government. My family Delaware language is now extinct, my paternal grandfather being one of the last speakers. He was deaf in his left ear from being beaten at the residential school for speaking Delaware on the playground. He never taught his language to his children or grandchildren.

Canadian graduates here may be aware that most Indigenous children were taken as young as 2 or 3 years old and put in church-run residential schools until the mid 1970s. Over 150,000 children were taken from their families. Some never saw their families again, some died at these schools, and others failed to fit into either their traditional families nor the white world. These schools were the deadliest part of colonialism – they killed the culture, language, kindred ties and spirits of these stolen children.

Other ways of erasing our cultures was the banning of traditional ceremonies including pow wows until 1951. Our sacred ceremonial items were confiscated by government. My grandfather spent years trying to recover the Delaware scared artifacts – he eventually found them in a toybox in a church basement in London Ontario. I recall they were a turtle rattle and what my grandfather called a false face, a rather scary mask that was used for healing and protection in traditional ceremonies. These now reside in a museum.

Our Indian reserves operated under a “pass” system until the year of my birth whereby we needed the permission of the Indian Agent to leave the reserve. My father was first allowed to vote when I was 10 years old. He would have had to give up his Indian status to vote prior. Purchasing alcohol was a felony until I was 9 years old.

The traditional Delaware name is the Lenni-Lenape which means “The People”. Unlike the Peshemakhoddi, many of the Lenni-Lenape were displaced from our original homelands in the US along the Delaware River. Some of us came to Canada in the mid 1800’s, and some headed west. My ancestors brought a great, great grandmother, who was, and I quote from an Indian agent letter, “a stolen white woman.” She grew up on Six Nations and chose later to remain on Six Nations and marry an Indigenous man. Our family name was given to my ancestor military runner in the Delaware valley by the name of Moses Cornelius. He bestowed the name Corelius Moses on my ancestor when he was baptized into the Christian faith.

I would like to talk about a practical example of decolonization within the Anglican Church of Canada. I have been involved in work to build an Indigenous church within the Anglican Church of Canada. We have been at for some time, with my mother preceding me in this work.

Indigenous Anglicans took a decision to stay within the church and to build our own Indigenous church within it. Separation was not an option. Despite our history with the church, we had the blessing of Jesus Christ who was with us throughout. And we were not alone – we worked with other colonized peoples around the world in the Anglican Communion to continue to follow the Anglican tradition. But we wanted change and we worked on forgiveness.

You can imagine how difficult change was for the non-Indigenous church facing change. They also had a process to work through. There was the normal range of reactions to proceeding with this change. Within a time honoured institution like the Church of England we faced reactions ranging from negative and hostile, to neutral and even to some enthusiasm. Change management 101 says you start to work with those who are with you. So we tried. We steered clear of the naysayers and tried to work with supporters.

But regretfully, we underestimated the magnitude and personal cost to us in this work. We had to make changes through the normal council of general synod committees, procedures and rules and hierarchical structures to build our church one brick at a time -  ironically, through the colonial system we were trying to shed. Many of our Elders and clergy became exhausted from both ministering to their own communities and dealing with their own healing journeys from residential schools. And there simply were not enough Indigenous people, elders and Indigenous clergy to educate the whole church on our culture and ways. There was so little energy left for building partnerships with allies that we need to succeed.

But we knew that work needed to be done. That is where institutions like SSU can help. There is goodwill out there but so few Indigenous people cannot educate the whole country. It takes significant movement on the settler side to be a good partner and ally.

We tried to explain to the Anglican church that we needed to withdraw behind closed doors to work on ourselves first and do our work our way. Most of my Indigenous colleagues were and are still dealing with trauma from residential schools. We needed to rediscover our own history and culture. We had to rewrite the narrative that we were given to us by our colonizers about ourselves. So we excluded settlers until we were ready to receive them on our terms. There were some hard feelings as some did not recognize that taking a back seat was required – they were doing what came naturally.  Except it was disrespectful to us and the concept of self-determination. You can imagine how that went over with some individuals accustomed to privileged access to running church business.

We went behind closed doors and produced an Indigenous constitution called The Covenant and Our Way of Life. It noted that non-Indigenous people might, at a future date, be invited into the Indigenous tent that we named ‘The Sacred Circle’. This was to be the foundation for building our church.

On the actual building of the Indigenous church itself, we were overwhelmed by how difficult it was for non-Indigenous Anglicans to shed their inherent colonial perspectives. Issues like recasting synod structures, transferring real decision-making power to us, reforming age-old canon law, or setting aside hierarchical ways of conducting business were challenging to us. Many of us were volunteers or had full time ministries back home. The church did some successful experimentation with our way of working in circle where some individuals are not elevated above others and all voices are equal. But our traditional decision-making processes are slow and inclusive and were not designed for western expediency. Disrespect was often inadvertent but we forced people to face up to seemingly minor interactions on their side. But one situation we could not overcome was that church law that set out the hierarchy did not allow our Indigenous Archbishop to take a seat at the head governance table at council of general synod business. It was very hurtful to us that our Indigenous Archbishop was not accorded the respect, recognition and equality because of these canon law strictures.

We understood that the Church of England traditions were considered ‘sacred’, including to many of our Indigenous brothers and sisters. These traditions were also part of why we wanted to remain withing the church. But we wanted our traditional languages and spirituality to infuse the Anglican liturgy. We did not see these as incompatible. Rules, laws, procedures were man-made and can be undone and made over, or can simply evolve with the times. I saw many tears and real pain about change. People loved their church and their traditions. Integrating traditional Indigenous spiritual practices like smudging into Anglican liturgical practice took many years to accept. There some still opposed. Progress continues to be made but it is slow. Hard realities like the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools and missing and murdered Indigenous women kept coming at the church and the pressures made change inevitable.

We now have a number of Indigenous, Inuit and Métis bishops and clergy. We have our own Anglican Indigenous Archbishop. Restitution has been paid to residential school survivors. We have an apology for harm, including spiritual harm, from the head of the Canadian church as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury.  We have our own constitution called The Covenant and Our Way of Life. We have our own governing body called Sacred Circle and its executive body called the Anglican Council of Indigenous People. Some dioceses are tithing the sale of church properties to the Indigenous church. We created an Indigenous ecclesiastical diocese. And we are making progress in building ‘relatives’ of our fellow Anglicans. There is now a commission examining how church structures could be changed called Reimagining the Church. Culturally, we are changing the whole church to be a bit more like us.

There is more to this example, but I want to stop here and digress back to SSU. What we encountered in the Anglican church is replicated in many ways and many organizational structures across Canada in attempts to decolonize. But where are the people who are receptive, educated and trained in decolonizing, who understand what real reconciliation and self-determination look like? Indigenous people are doing their part and it sometimes feels that we are doing all the compromising. But we need serious bridge-building on the other side. And it has to be more than meeting halfway for reasons I have already referenced.

To the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, reconciliation is about “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country.” For that to happen, The Commission says that “there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour.”

But I advocate that even more must happen. I believe that we all share basic ideals of faith, humanity and human principles. We have a lot to offer to the West, but it is a two-way street.  Canadian society is currently faced with an identity crisis caused by our neighbours to the south. We will need broader social, environmental and economic change. I believe that the country would benefit from an injection of Indigenous values as we regroup and move forward together as Canadians - where we treat our worlds as interconnected, based on the natural world and something sacred to be safeguarded - where our values shine through in all that we do, whether caring for all people and living things, the environment, our communities, or our relationships. For example, we can value and respect our seniors more, like our Indigenous elders, for their wisdom, central role in the family and community, and the lives they have led.

We can sort out differences in ‘circle’ where all voices are heard and are equal, where hierarchy matters less. Where we value each other as whole persons – emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, each with talents given by the Creator so no one is left behind. We can be less individualistic and committed to a sustainable future to benefit all. Policies and education can deliberately encompass Indigenous ways in the world, our traditional knowledge, our holistic view of the sacredness of Creation. We can have a resurgence of the true meaning of the treaties that we both signed many years ago. There is a saying that “we are all treaty people” and we are. We can share resources more equitably for a common good – as well as recognize our special rights as First Peoples to pursue our traditional livelihoods as an integral part of resource allocation. These are not opposing things.

On cultural diversity, we must do more than simply tolerate each other’s culture. We can incorporate Indigenous culture and ways to become truly part of Canada itself. For example, I love that the Maori haka has become an important part of New Zealand’s cultural identity and symbol as a country. We can all celebrate Indigeneity as part of who we are as a country.

Canada is also in a unique position right now. We have come together is ways not seen since the last world war. As we look at our neighbour in the south, we can see clearly the opportunity to better define who we are and what we stand for, and be thoughtful about moving forward.

This is more than a two day training session, a cultural retreat, reciting land recognitions, or using a ‘how-to’ checklist for engagement. It is more than enlightened government policies on prior and informed consent or Supreme Court decisions on aboriginal rights. How can we tangibly move past “reconciliation” as a buzzword? What does true self-determination look like. How do individuals become good partners, allies and friends in the spirit of the Two-Row wampum where one does not dominate the other? How do we root out systemic racism?

Where are the Canadians who have thought these things through and understand how to walk side by side with us, with humility? Where will the breakthroughs come from to find the resources we need to move forward? How do we position all this as a positive part  Canada’s reinvention of itself, despite the tough times ahead? We are talking about a huge social, cultural and economic shift. I see it as an opportunity! Resistance takes even more energy than accommodation. All this begins with leadership by the right people – beginning with committed, principled, educated people who operate by a moral code.

That is where SSU comes in, small as it is. I approached the SSU board, leadership and faculty and we looked across the country at offerings out there. We all agreed that Canada, and perhaps elsewhere, does need more structured learning and engagement with the goal of producing committed non-Indigenous allies and partners. Reconciliation takes at least two very committed partners to build the necessary bridges and to be able to walk side by side as true partners. SSU agreed to take commitment to act. We began a structured, credentialed learning program of Indigenous Studies that goes beyond a weekend retreat or sweat lodge experience or a land acknowledgement.

The goal of SSU Reconciliation Studies Program is to produce graduates:

• who advocate for and engage in true self-determination,

• who bring profound respect and humility to their work,

• who aspire to building and earning the trust of Indigenous people,

• Who appreciate the vast healing task faced by generations of Indigenous people as a result of residential schools,

• Who are skilled at building the cultural competency necessary for communities across Canada to succeed,

• And finally, who aspire to be a bridge builder with Canada’s First Peoples, the People of the Land and Waters.

  
  

From my personal perspective, I can say that defining Indigeneity is personal. There is no single formula for how to walk the good road with Indigenous people. That is important to know. All Indigenous people are on their own personal journeys to reclaim their culture and language and make their communities better places. We and our Indigenous organizations are all at different places of ‘becoming’, of demonstrating what agency looks like, and how to be as Indigenous as we want to with the reality that most of us want to live in harmony in the western world that we find ourselves in.

SSU Indigenous Studies grads will encounter Indigenous anger and rage – I often feel that myself and I have had a relatively privileged upbringing as my parents did not go to residential schools. They will encounter passivity, mistrust and deep wounds that manifest in low self-esteem, poor parenting skills due to residential schools’ divestment of family structures, and unhealthy behaviour in many communities. We will be in the healing stage for some time to come.

But we need SSU grads to walk with us. I invite you to continue your studies in our Reconciliation Studies Program to learn more.

Let me conclude with a quote from an unknown author – “They tried to bury us and our culture, but they didn’t know that we are seeds.”  I count on today’s grads to carry these stories and messages into your work and your worlds as you move forward with pride for your accomplishments here at SSU.

Thank you for who you are and what you are determined to become.