13 - Jodi Spargur - Catalyzer for Justice

Jodi Spargur is a settler of Nordic/German heritage living and working on the unceeded territory of the Squamish, Musqueaum and Tslei-Watuth Peoples. Jodi is a farmer, furniture-mover, pastor and catalyzer for justice and healing between the church and indigenous peoples in Canada.

Jodi continually crosses thresholds into spaces where she has much to learn, whether that be in the implications of residential schools for well-meaning people of faith today, or the struggles of Indigenous families to resist apprehensions by the Child Welfare System, or a resistance camp of the Wet’suwet’en standing in the way of pipeline expansions.

The pathway into her current work with Healing at the Wounding Place came largely out of her experiences with planting and pastoring God’s House of Many Faces, a church in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver that squatted in borrowed spaces, met outside whenever weather permitted and was formed around Indigenous people who made up a large portion of the church.  Impacts of Residential Schools and the systemic racism that still marks Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people were evident in the day to day lives of church and community members.

Currently Jodi is leading the work of Healing at the Wounding Place based out of Grandview Calvary Baptist Church looking to engage people of faith and indigenous communities in walking into whole, healing and just relationships. Healing has begun in indigenous communities across Canada.  Jodi holds out the question whether the church, one of the primary wounding places, can become a place of healing for indigenous and non-indigenous people alike.

Links

• Jodi Spargur’s website
• Unistoten Resistance Camp
• Wet’suwet’en website – check out the video, “Your Voice, Our Future”
• Globe and Mail Wet’suwet’en Photo Gallery
• Globe and Mail guide to the story