A Declaration of the First Nations

'We, the Original People of this land, know the Creator put us here. The Creator gave us our spiritual beliefs, our languages, our culture, and a place on Mother Earth which provided us with all our needs. We have maintained our freedom, our languages and our traditions from time immemorial'....from 'The Assembly of First Nations; A Declaration of the First Nations'. And so perhaps with this in mind, and full of conversations I had had with people on Gordon's First Nation Reserve it was not surprising that as I reflected in the early morning hours on the parable of the workers in the vineyard which I was to preach on that morning, that I came up with a rather different take........ Those who began work at the earliest hour were the Native First Nation People. Then those who came late in the day were the settlers who took the land and claimed it for themselves. And those who came last were not content to receive the same payment, but in fact insisted that those who had been there from the beginning should receive nothing.