Land Acknowledgement

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship is located on the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a region that served as the ancestral home of the Hopewell people and, more recently, the Anishinaabe Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations. As we do our work at CICW, we are grateful for the way these people cared for the land and loved it. We lament the injustice of treaties and covenants between settler peoples and indigenous peoples that were unjust or unkept. We are striving to learn how to tell this history more truthfully, to care for these lands more intentionally, and to embody more just practices toward all peoples, God helping us. As an institution of a binational denomination--the Christian Reformed Church in North America--we are grateful to learn from discussions in both Canada and the United States about this work, including from the Centre for Public Dialogue, as well as in multi-denominational forums, including NAIITS An Indigenous Learning Community.

For our own learning on these themes, see articles under the topics 'cultural diversity' or 'justice/reconciliation.'