The papal apology to residential school survivors this week left some indigenous Central Albertans with unanswered questions, and eagerly awaiting actions to support the pontiff’s words.
Lyle Keewatin Richards, of Red Deer, said he did not want to spoil what was a long-awaited day for survivors of Canada’s residential schools by being overly critical of the pope’s penitential speech at Maskwacis.
Many former residential school students had waited 50 years or more to hear Pope Francis, the global head of the Catholic Church, utter the words “I am deeply sorry” — as he did before an emotional crowd of about 2,000 people who gathered outdoors on Monday.
After watching the televised address on the news, Richards called it “a start… We asked for him to say sorry, and he did that. It seems impolite for me to say much more…
“Now we are waiting, with cautious optimism, for words to be put to action,” Richards added.
Francis apologized for forced assimilation, the result of the “colonizing mentality” of the times.
He also expressed shame for the “deplorable evil” and “disastrous errors” that happened at the schools and begged forgiveness from the survivors “for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”
It was the first apology made on Canadian soil by the pontiff, who used a wheelchair, due to a fractured knee. He had travelled to Canada to help heal deep wounds that surfaced with the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools sites in 2021.
Metis Red Deerian Raye St. Denys, whose relatives had their First Nations culture suppressed by residential school teachers, was troubled by what was left out of the pope’s apology.
She had expected Francis to come to Alberta to announce a plan to eventually turn over the church’s records of residential school attendance and deaths. He did not.
Instead, Francis returned a pair of red children’s moccasins that were gifted to him by a Canadian First Nations Person. St. Denys doesn’t understand this gesture, saying returning a gift is “weird.”
Like many other Canadian Indigenous citizens, St. Denys wanted the pontiff to repudiate the Doctrines of Discovery — 15th-Century edicts issued by the Vatican that justified the brutal conquest and colonization of non-Christians — who were deemed “enemies of Christ.”
He did not, even though at least one man at Maskwacis on Monday shouted out to Francis, urging the Doctrines to be rescinded.
Maskwacis-area chiefs expressed mixed reactions to the pope’s apology in an emailed release.
Chief Vernon Saddleback, Chief of the Samson Cree Nation, said of Francis’s address, “Words cannot describe how important today is for the healing journey for a lot of First Nations people… so, I’m really grateful for this event to happen.”
Meanwhile, Randy Ermineskin, Chief of Ermineskin Cree Nation, said his “heart broke for the pain in the moment.”
Ermineskin recalled his late brother had attended a residential school before taking his own life in 1969. “I always think about that – he was only 17 years old. What kind of life would he have had? I am sure he’d have been a prominent member of our Nation,” said the chief.
Ermineskin recalled his own ears were pulled and slapped by the teachers, who told him he would never accomplish anything. “Three degrees later, I’m going to have my doctorate. Eventually, I taught at the school here, and became a phys-ed teacher,” he said, adding that “true justice and healing” is what he was considering while waiting for the pope to arrive.
Chief Desmond Bull of Louis Bull First Nation used the national spotlight to urge non-native Canadians not to keep telling Indigenous people to “get over it.”
“We can’t get over it when the last of our residential schools closed in the mid-nineties. We can’t get over it when our Survivors are still here. We can’t get over it when intergenerational trauma impacts every youth, every member, and everyone who has a family that has a survivor of residential school…
“When you see a First Nations person, please don’t tell them to get over it, but get with it and understand who they are and understand why they’re going through the trauma that they are going through, and be a part of that healing journey,” Bull added.
On Tuesday, Murray Sinclair, the chief commissioner of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, publicly stated that the pope should have acknowledged the church’s full role in residential schools, and not just blame Christian individuals.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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