Theologian Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo, anthropologists Dr. Valentina Napolitano and Dr. Kristin Norget discuss reconciliation, Indigenous Peoples, and the Catholic Church

*Statue of Kateri Tekakwitha (“Lily of the Mohawks”) at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2015.*
Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, Auriesville, New York to an Algonquin mother and a Mohawk-chief father, St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) is the first Native American to be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church in the United States and in Canada. Photo: *Dieterkaupp*

Theologian Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo is Mohawk from Kahnawake, a First Nations community outside of Montreal, Canada. His research focuses on the history and impacts of Residential Schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Calls to Actions; Indigenous interactions with Christianity and the Church; and building community relationships. He co-authored (with Tom Reynolds) the essay "Two Ears, One Mouth: Theological Education Towards Respect," published in A Quest for Respect: The Church and Indigenous Spirituality (Mennonite Church Canada, 2017).

In this episode of OP Talks, Hamilton-Diabo discusses reconciliation, Indigenous Peoples, and the Catholic Church with anthropologists Dr. Valentina Napolitano and Dr. Kristin Norget, co-authors of the article “Pope Francis, Reconciliation, and the State” (12 August 2022, FocaalBlog), featured on HTI Open Plaza as "Penitential Pilgrimage" (10 October 2022).

The road toward reconciliation is a long journey that will require working together, and there “is not one broad approach,” according to Hamilton-Diabo. “Some of these ideas around reconciliation is that there's an end goal and, really, what it is about is this idea of either establishing or reestablishing relationships—and, in some cases, reconciliation is not the right word,” he says. “It is conciliation for some communities and, for some people, they feel like, ‘We never had a good relationship to start off with, what are we trying to go back to?’ For some, it is actually this redevelopment."

Hamilton-Diabo also encourages us to really think about the nature of truth: “We talk about Truth and Reconciliation. There's a reason why they're put together. Truth is that whole understanding, that being able to take in some of the experiences and listening, and sometimes that gets missed. We just automatically say, ‘Let's just try to fix this.’”

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Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in Theology, June Callwood Professor in Social Justice, Special Advisor on Indigenous Issues, and convenor of the Indigenous Advisory Circle at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto. His work focuses on the history and impacts of Residential Schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Calls to Actions; Indigenous interactions with Christianity and the Church; and building community relationships. As well, he is interested exploring the impacts of educational systems and teaching methods on individuals and communities. His teaching focuses on the use of personal stories, experiences and worldviews to make connections.

Previously, Hamilton-Diabo served as Director of the Office of Indigenous Initiatives (Provost’s Office and Human Resources & Equity) at the University of Toronto. He has also taught at the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary (now the Martin Luther University College) at Wilfred Laurier University. Prior to entering post-secondary education, he was an ESL (English as a Second Language) Instructor with LINC (Language Instruction to Newcomers to Canada) and coordinated a Basic Skills and Career Program for adults at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto.

Hamilton-Diabo is Mohawk from Kahnawake, a First Nations community outside of Montreal. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Concordia University; a Bachelor of Education from York University; and a Master of Theological Studies from Emmanuel College at Victoria University in the University of Toronto. He is the co-author (with Tom Reynolds) of the essay "Two Ears, One Mouth: Theological Education Towards Respect," published in A Quest for Respect: The Church and Indigenous Spirituality (Mennonite Church Canada, 2017).

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Dr. Valentina Napolitano is Professor of Anthropology and Connaught Scholar at the University of Toronto. Her work engages with anthropological, political theological and critical theory debates about personhood, migration, traces, borderlands, and the religious. Among other work, she is the author of two monographs—Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church (Fordham University Press, 2015) and Migration, Mujercitas and Medicine Man: Living in Urban Mexico (University of California Press, 2002)—and different edited collections and articles. She is the recipient of the Connaught Global Challenge Award for the project Entangled Worlds: Sovereignty, Sanctities and Soil (with Prof. Simon Coleman), a tri-campus University of Toronto Initiative, and she herself navigates different threads of life through the soil and histories of the Americas, the trans- Mediterranean and West Africa.

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Dr. Kristin Norget is Associate Professor of Anthropology at McGill University. Her current research interests are concerned with mediatization and contemporary strategies of evangelization of the Roman Catholic Church focused on Mexico and Peru. She has also published on issues of indigeneity and Catholic liberation theology in Mexico. In addition, building on a long-standing interest in transcultural psychiatry, Dr. Norget, who holds a PhD from Cambridge University, completed an MA program in counseling psychology in 2017. She co-edited Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (Bloomsbury Press, 2022) with Eric Hoenes and Marc Loustau; The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017) with Valentina Napolitano and Maya Mayblin; and is the author of Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca (Columbia University Press, 2006).

Catholic and Indigenous

Theologian Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo, anthropologists Dr. Valentina Napolitano and Dr. Kristin Norget discuss reconciliation, Indigenous Peoples, and the Catholic Church

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