Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Manitoba has created a new prototype event with its pilot session held in Winkler.

Around 10 residents from the area took part in Compassion Starts With Understanding, an activity-driven workshop to understand the trauma colonization has inflicted upon indigenous people.

The event was organized by Jaymie Friesen, MCC Abuse Prevention and Response Program Coordinator, and Karry Saner-Harvey, MCC Indigenous Neighbours Program Coordinator.

Saner-Harvey explains the program was designed to help people understand some of the struggles indigenous people go through.

These include the reality of residential schools, the history of displacement, the Sixties Scoop, Indigenous communities experiencing economic depredation, suicide, and missing and murdered indigenous women.

"Those are the current things that are happening, in current realities to indigenous people," says Saner-Harvey. "So how can we understand what that does to us as individuals and be more present with them?"

The workshop is set to help with understanding the truths of what colonization has caused to indigenous people, by understanding those truths, how to change the country and work towards reconciliation.

Saner-Harvey says MCC hopes people gain a greater understanding of how trauma affects us as human beings, a greater understanding of others, and to grow empathy and sympathy for people.

Another workshop will be held in Winnipeg later this year, with a possibility of holding another session in Winkler as well as other communities throughout the Red River Valley.