The Interchurch Council on Hydropower (ICH) has launched an initiative called Friends of Hydro-Impacted Communities for the purpose of mitigating the harms caused to Indigenous communities’ lands, lives and livelihoods by the flooding of their homes and territories by massive dams built to generate electricity for consumers in southern Manitoba and for export to Saskatchewan, Ontario and northern U.S.A. We are reaching out to church groups and others who are seeking practical, concrete expressions of reconciliation with Indigenous people by working together on community-led projects that support communities’ recovery, resilience, livelihoods, healing and wellness, and safety for children and youth.

Cree elder and co-chair Ellen Cook of ICH calls this work mâmowi-kwayask-itastâtân – Working Together to Make it Right.

Typically the exploration of possibilities for such a partnership begins by sitting together, sharing food and stories, seeking to understand community members’ vision for their future, and identifying how neighbours from outside the community might support those aspirations. This could take the form of joining together in storytelling, music and art activities, sports and recreation, land-based healing, gardening, building things, advocating for compassionate and inclusive policy change, fundraising or sponsoring applications for grants from churches’ Indigenous healing funds, to name just a few possibilities.

For more information visit our website at hydrojustice.org, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ICHManitoba or contact ICH members Robert Miller (tel. 204-255-1131) or Amanda Leighton (tel 204-668-6662) or email hydrojustice@gmail.com.

Click here to read a letter of invitation to churches from Ellen Cook.