Hope Mennonite Church Justice Team Action

• A few years ago Hope Mennonite Church formed a Justice Team to guide the church in responding to climate change and working towards justice between Indigenous and settler peoples.
  
  
• Understanding that climate and Indigenous justice are linked, the team helped organize a march and a letter-writing campaign as part of a broader push for the federal government to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The ecumenical campaign ultimately led to Canada’s adoption of UNDRIP and a framework for its implementation.
  
  
• The Justice Team collected information on big banks funding new fossil fuel projects and led a series of conversations within the congregation about divestment. Local experts on ethical investing were invited to speak to the congregation. The team held a church service of lament at an oil pumping station and a service of exhortation in a bank parking lot at which church members announced the closure of their bank accounts. Members of the congregation and others inspired by these conversations have moved their money from fossil-fuel funding banks to credit unions.
  
  
• In 2021 the Justice Team supported two members of the church who traveled to Wet'suwet'en territory to support Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs resisting the construction of a natural gas pipeline across their land.
  
  
• The Justice Team recently drafted a public statement on climate change and guided the congregation through a conversation that resulted in Hope Mennonite Church formally adopting the statement and publishing it on their website. (contributed by Josiah Neufeld)