Treaty as bottomline: As love

Abstract

The more I try to use the language of landline, bloodline, and songline to explain what animates my imagination for holy decolonisation and righteous liberation, the more I realise that I am rooted in a ruin, grasping at fragments. These fragments nonetheless help me to understand that my singular life can participate in liberation on Turtle Island, where I have found myself. The spirit and intent of the treaties provide a solid bottomline to measure my own priorities against, in place of the landlines, bloodlines, and songlines of others. I don’t expect to own land; my family line ends with me; and I have left behind the culture I knew in order to be part of a Mennonite faith community that can nurture and teach me. Yet treaty offers me a path to know who I am and how to relate in a land where I don’t have roots. It is a generous and gracious discipleship.