Although the war in Ukraine has not continued to be the overwhelming front page news on a daily basis, the war still goes on. People are still fleeing towns of immediate conflict and are still getting killed. Little spoken about is the forced relocation of Ukrainians in Russian held areas into Ukraine. Some estimates put the number as high as 1.5 million, including children to be “adopted” by Russian families.
This attempt to wipe out Ukrainian culture is reminiscent of the attempts by Canadian and U.S. governments to wipe out Indian culture in the last century by forcing children into boarding schools where they were brutalized when they tried to retain their Native American culture. Pope Francis asked forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in the Canadian schools. We need to come to a reckoning in American schools.
These issues don’t come to mind for many of us in the East although there are pieces of land set aside in New York State, Connecticut, and Massachusetts as reservations. New Jersey had the oldest such piece of land but moved its inhabitants out to central New York and Wisconsin. It’s not that Stalin learned from what we did but Putin is trying to replicate it.
Prayer for the Day
We know we have many failures and faults.
And that we do not want to face deeds done in our past;
And we know we leave the poor in their poverty and the afflicted in their pain,
Often content to leave your demands for others to fill.
Forgive us, O God, and erase the habits of our uncaring,
And transform our words into action as you call us to do.
In the name of the Transformer of our lives,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Relocation is like ripping you from everything you know. And it's ripping you from that bond you have with the wild rice, with the lakes, with the strawberries and blueberries ... the place you know.
- Dorene Day, Anishinabe Ojibway activist
Go forward with courage. When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
- Chief White Eagle, Ponca Chief
Consider the work of God; who can make straight what God has made not straight?
Ecclesiastes 7: 11