Rising Above Aboriginal Healing Conference Coming to Winnipeg

Rising Above is a ministry of "First Peoples Helping First Peoples" that is enabling the original peoples of our land to experience the power of forgiveness, and to empower them to rise above the past into a destiny that will lead other people groups and ethnicities on to the ancient path of healing at the heart level. This ancient path goes all of the way back to the Creator who has now revealed Himself in the Person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The image of a personal and relational Creator has been hugely distorted to Aboriginal people in the past by the institutional church, and by the federal government through assimilationist and paternalistic policies, but the revelation is now increasing that the Creator has come to free the people of every nation to be exactly who He has created and designed them to be, and to find their true identity (which includes one's ethnicity) and destiny in Him.

Between May 26 and 30, 2010, a Rising Above Aboriginal Family Healing Conference will take place at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Our universities today rarely unify knowledge any more, that is, to integrate the knowledge of the heart and of the mind. Without a knowledge of the One who created all things, we have no way of unifying and integrating heart knowledge with academic learning.

Yet it is out of the heart, the part of us that is below the surface, and that is invisible, and much deeper than our presenting behaviour, that the issues of life flow from. Ultimately, it is our inner life--our assumptions, values, worldview, desires, emotion, and attitudes--as well as our relationships, that need to be transformed.

The University of Manitoba is located in the southern part of the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, just off the Pembina Highway. It is significant, I think, that the University of Manitoba is in Winnipeg, which is in "the heart of the continent."
From May 26-30, 2010, it will also be a place where heart issues that have been suppressed for too long will be brought to the light, and addressed, so that the interior, invisible world of broken and wounded hearts and human relationships can be healed.

It is out of the heart that the issues of life proceed. It has become as clear of the day that education that does not start with the heart, and proceed from there to the mind and then to the other issues of life, does not produce the solutions that we need in the social, economic and environmental areas of life. Everything always reverts back to the level of where people's hearts are at, and whether those hearts are broken or made whole.

Government legislation alone cannot change the hearts of people, or bring the necessary healing that is so foundational to addressing the other issues.

And the University Centre Building is in the heart of the University of Manitoba campus.

This fine facility will during the week-end of May 26-30, 2010, be the site of workshops and plenary sessions as well as talking circles that will focus on heart issues that underly the external issues.

These issues will involve things like residential school issues, sexual abuse, parenting, suicide, grieving and loss, depression, women of worth, addictions, domestic violence, embracing your identity, repentance, and the healing path. The Conference will open the first night (Wednesday, May 26) with the topic: The Problem Among Us: Heart Issues.

Check out the list of predominately First Nations speakers and communicators for this Rising Above Conference here.

As people start to share their story and their journey transparently and honestly, it releases more and more people to share their story as well, and to rise above the shame of the past through the power of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

How Christ was presented to many Native people in the past was not just about Jesus, but it was in many ways an extension of the white man's culture as well. Consequently, God's authority was presented (and misrepresented) in a judgmental, dominating and controlling sort of way.

In reality, the Cross of Jesus actually points to the fact that God wants justice and mercy, not injustice and harshness, to rule on earth, and that rule must begin in our hearts, and work from the inside out, bringing ultimate transformation to our personal lives, our families and our communities as well.

The Native people of Canada are a people of the heart, and some 70,000 of them, (which is the largest urban population of Natives in Canada), live in the heart, the inner city of Winnipeg, which is the heart of the Continent.

If you are one who believes that the root of all of the social, economic and environmental issues that we face are at the heart level, please consider being involved in some way with the Rising Above Aboriginal Family Healing Conference in Winnipeg from May 26-30, 2010. Check it out here.