All Saints Parish, Brookline MA

Spirituality for a digital world

The Courageous Conversations group has discussed, and the Vestry has approved the following land acknowledgment for use in our liturgy, on our website and in other places.

We remember and honor the Indigenous people of the world. We remember especially that we live, work, and worship on the unceded land of the Massachusett people, whose traditions, language, and stewardship continue today through their lineal descendants, the Massachusett Tribe of Ponkapoag. We give thanks for them, their neighbors the Wampanoag and Nipmuc, and for other Indigenous Nations, among them the Arapaho and Shoshone, whose people were affected by historic missionary work from this parish. We are grateful for the witness of Indigenous communities, for their humility and resilience, their historic and ongoing stewardship of the land, and their prophetic call to us to both acknowledge the traumas inflicted upon them, and then to strive to live differently so that we may be in right relationship with them and all creation. We pray to the creator of all, through Jesus Christ, to help us to learn from our past so that we can be instruments of justice and peace for all people in today’s world.  Amen.

This is one step in recognizing that our church sits on land originally inhabited by Native Americans and later appropriated by European Americans. But an acknowledgement of this history alone, without an effort to address damage and reconcile relationships, is a limited gesture. Accordingly, to further our work of reparation, All Saints has invested $25,000—approximately the original price All Saints paid for its land in 1895—in the Boston Impact Initiative, whose stated aims are to “advance economic and racial justice by building a sustainable and inclusive economy where entrepreneurs and communities of color have financial, social, and political power.” All Saints also commits to continuing to look for other opportunities to use its resources to make reparations. For more information or if you have any questions, contact Maggie Hogan, Rob Hillman, or Richard.