Canada has “much to share with other countries” when it comes to reconciliation and ministry with Indigenous peoples, says Vancouver Archbishop Richard Smith, as he prepares to attend the International Conference on Catholic Indigenous Ministry in New Zealand.

Archbishop Smith, who will travel to Auckland in early March with a Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops delegation, told The B.C. Catholic he hopes to discuss expanding the initiative beyond Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, whose bishops’ conferences currently take part.

“The relation between the Church and local Indigenous populations is, after all, a global phenomenon, and we need continuously to be learning from one another so that the journey will move forward in a good way.”

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About 50 delegates from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States will take part, along with two officials from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The initiative grew out of conversations following Pope Francis’s 2022 penitential pilgrimage to Canada. It was first held in Washington, D.C., in 2023 after the USCCB invited representatives from the four English-speaking episcopal conferences “to share experiences and insights with respect to how the Church can best continue to walk together with Indigenous Peoples,” the Archbishop said.

The hope was to foster dialogue, consultation, and collaboration between bishops and Indigenous Catholic leaders in their respective countries.

“The first meeting was so rich in content and experience that everyone agreed it should continue,” he said. New Zealand is hosting the second gathering of the conference and Canada will host the third at a date to be confirmed.

Archbishop Smith will be joined by Bishop Pierre-Olivier Tremblay of Hearst-Moosonee as well as Indigenous leaders Graydon Nicholas of New Brunswick and Angelina Stiglich of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, along with CCCB Indigenous Affairs Advisor Tracy Blain.

Archbishop Smith also took part in the 2023 conference when he was Archbishop of Edmonton, with Bishop Mark Hagemoen of Saskatoon. Indigenous attendees from Canada included Rosella Kinoshameg of Ontario (Ojibway/Odawa), Giselle Marion of the Tłı̨chǫ First Nation in the Northwest Territories, and the Hon. Graydon Nicholas (Welastoqiyik, Neqotkok), a Wolastoquey Elder, former lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, and member of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Circle, the CCCB national Indigenous advisory body.

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At that time, Archbishop Smith described the gathering as “another opportunity to hear directly from the Indigenous peoples of Canada and other countries” and “a reminder to walk together with our Indigenous peoples on the path to healing towards a future full of hope.”

The Washington meeting focused on evangelization, education, reconciliation, healing, inculturation, and social concerns including poverty, racism, and care for the environment. It included listening sessions between bishops and Indigenous Catholic leaders aimed at strengthening ministry at the international level.

The New Zealand gathering is being co-chaired by Bishop Stephen Lowe of Auckland, president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, and Māori Catholic leader Loraine Elliott. Māori are the Indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand.

Elliott said hosting the conference is a privilege and emphasized that while Māori Catholics will speak to their own history, the focus will be on shared experience across the four countries and how that can shape ongoing ministry efforts.

Bishop Lowe has pointed to St. John Paul II’s 1986 address to Māori as a blueprint that remains relevant. In that address, the Pope said: “Treasure your culture, let the Gospel of Christ continue to penetrate and permeate it confirming your sense of identity as a unique part of God’s household. It is as Māori that the Lord calls you; it is as Māori that you belong to the Church, the one Body of Christ.”

Manuel Beazley, who chairs Te Rōpū Māori, an advisory group to the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, said the ICCI gathering will carry forward conversations from the Synod on Synodality assemblies in Rome “in a focused way and in ways we hope can augment current initiatives to minister well to Indigenous Catholics.”

For the Church in Canada, Archbishop Smith sees both an opportunity to contribute and to learn.

“We have much to share with other countries,” he said. “Our experiences over the last few years, within which we faced significant challenges and worked together to address and move through them to a place of deepened relationship and growing mutual trust, can teach people in other places that reconciliation can be achieved in spite of difficulties and hardships.”

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At the same time, he emphasized that the work in Canada remains ongoing.

“This is not to say that our journey here is complete – far from it. This is something that we walk together continuously,” he said. “In that respect, I look forward to hearing the experiences of others, from which we, in turn, can hopefully gain helpful insights to inform our ongoing work here in Canada.”