When I was going through my late-father’s belongings a decade ago, I came across an old article he had saved from the 1980s.
It was from a far-right-wing magazine called the ‘Alberta Report’. Without boring you with too many details, my father was a practising neo-pagan and his particular social circle had acquired an old church where they could practice their spirituality in peace.
Or so they thought.
The article accuses my father’s group of devil worship and other sensational activities. In reality they were just reciting Greek and Roman dramas and drinking wine. The Alberta Report’s over-the-top interpretation eventually lead to the more mainstream newspapers taking notice, with one photographer even getting secret shots of the garden of the former church grounds.
I bring this story of religious intolerance up because the complete opposite appears to be at work at Inuvik Regional Hospital, where administration is currently seeking feedback from the community on how it can make the health centre’s chapel more inclusive to the religious wealth of the region.
This is a fantastic initiative and the people behind it, Debra English and Arlene Jorgensen, both deserve major kudos for the care and attention they’re bringing to it. They understand the importance of both giving a space for all religions, but also the need to be respectful of the work that has already gone into the chapel to date. So their careful approach to finding a home for the current items in the chapel is encouraging.
Regardless, making the chapel more inclusive to other religious views is far overdue. Inuvik has had an active and dedicated Muslim population since well into the last century. The Midnight Sun Mosque operates a food bank and routinely brings in supplies and other assistance for the community at large. Many of the long-standing businesses and employers in the community are the result of the work put into the community by its Muslim residents. Surely they’ve earned a spot in the hospital to pray by now.
With efforts to preserve and restore both Gwich’in and Inuvialuktun languages and culture, there could some day be efforts to revitalize traditional spiritual practices as well, if this isn’t happening already. Many other Indigenous groups around the world who have reclaimed their identity often do so. By making the chapel a more inclusive place for recollection and spirituality, the Inuvik Regional Hospital staff are indirectly providing a safe space for such work to occur.
Religious freedom is a fundamental element of democracy — without the ability to worship if and as you choose, you can’t really say you free to make your own decisions. There are many, many paths up the mountain and our religious beliefs are merely our best estimates of what sits at the top. Many of these paths intersect, many more do not. Some are so fundamentally different from each other that they make no sense to one another. But as human beings, we have a duty to one-another to not hinder our individual quests to understand the divine, or reach nirvana or however you wish to describe it.
So hats off to the IRH staff for taking this issue seriously and handling it so carefully.