Welcome! Trinity Grace United Church is hosting a blanket exercise. We have limited spots, so please RSVP to reserve your place. Please note that only email addresses indicate here will be sent further information and follow-up material. Keep scrolling for more information about what the Blanket Exercise is, and who will be facilitating!
RSVP is required
To learn more about KAIROS Blanket Exercise, you can also visit the official website here
What is Kairos Blanket Exercise ?
This participatory workshop will help to understand how colonization of the land we now know as British Columbia and Canada has impacted the people who lived here long before settlers arrived. Through this exercise you will explore the nation-to-nation relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, how this relationship has been damaged over the years, and how we all can work toward reconciliation.
In 1996, in response to Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), the Aboriginal Rights Coalition worked with Indigenous elders and teachers to develop an interactive way of learning the history most Canadians are never taught.
The KAIROS Blanket Exercise was the result; it has since been offered thousands of times and the sixth edition was released in 2020. Participants learn about European colonization of Turtle Island (North America), the accompanying dispossession of Indigenous peoples (reflected by the steady removal of blankets upon which participants stand) and Indigenous resistance and efforts to reclaim land and rights.
Participants are drawn into the experience by engaging on an emotional and intellectual level, the Blanket Exercise effectively educates and increases empathy. Participants also have the opportunity to debrief and discuss the experience as a group. This often takes the form of a talking circle.
With this knowledge of our shared history we can begin to work together with mutual respect toward reconciliation. The members of KAIROS are: the Anglican Church of Canada, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Canadian Religious Conference, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (Canada Corporation), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Mennonite Central Committee Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and the United Church of Canada
A little bit about our facilitators
John & Nancy Denham
We have lived on the homeland of the shishalh Nation since 1977. Our reconciliation work began in 2010 after having attended the first TRC National Event in Winnipeg. We got involved with the clergy of both our local United Church and Anglican Church to help educate ourselves and our community in preparation for the TRC Event in Vancouver of 2013.
Our involvement has continued since then to include becoming Kairos Blanket Exercise facilitators (60+ exercises), organizing book studies, dialogue circles, and founding members of the syiyaya Reconciliation Movement which is a local reconciliation group working in collaboration with members of the shíshálh Nation.
Nancy is a trainer, facilitator, circle keeper and mentor for the Restorative Justice Program of the Sunshine Coast. In 2019 we became facilitators for the PWRDF Mapping Exercise and have now done several exercises here on the coast, in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island.