On June 24, 2022, the head of the Roman Catholic church, Pope Francis, will be coming to northern Turtle Island. A few weeks back, he expressed his sorry-ness to a delegation of Indigenous folks at the Vatican. They danced for him and showcased their culture with pride while being awe-struck with the opulence in which the Pontiff lives.
One cannot underestimate the Pope’s importance on the world stage. He holds numerous titles such as the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the
Roman Province, and Sovereign of the State of Vatican City.
His mission now – a mission he has chosen freely to carry out – is to apologize for the multiple forms of violence committed against Indigenous children and their families in and around residential schools, by many servants of the Catholic Church. The Pope’s apology, if offered sincerely and with an accurate account of the facts, will be important for many because it means the violence, after years of denial and cover-up, is being acknowledged.
Like many officials who apologize for violence carried out by members of their own organization, the Pope will receive council on how to deliver this apology. We are dealing here with systemic violence and oppression, including rape, torture, the kidnapping of children, and murder. So, what might the Pope’s advisors advise in terms of content and delivery?
First, his advisors might copy the official non-apologies of other church officials, including Priests and Bishops in Canada, and former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. These examples amount to a “how to not apologize”.
They could advise the use of vague or false language to minimize the violence. For example, Stephen Harper referred to the violence carried out in and around the residential schools as “a sad chapter in our history” – as if, but for this one chapter, justice ruled the day. That is not the
case, of course. Violence against Indigenous children and their families IS THE BOOK – not a single chapter. Proof of this is that the Catholic Church has continued to hum and hah and avoid telling the truth fully to this day.
Nick Todd and Allan Wade talked about the “colonial code of relations” operating in the society writ large and in the helping professions specifically. The “colonial code” is the method by which powerful white European elites frame themselves as superior and Indigenous people as inferior. One part of this code is the notion that passive and deficient Indigenous people need the white/professional saviour to correct the deficits said to be inherent in Indigenous people.
The colonial church official or mental health professional first finds deficiencies in the cultures and minds of Indigenous peoples and then claims to fix those deficiencies through the exercise of its illegitimate power. The colonial code is visible in child protection, policing, psychology, psychiatry, and so on. The colonial code shifts the focus from violence and racism by European authorities, led and enacted by the Catholic Church and its successive Popes to the present day, to invented deficits in Indigenous peoples.
These lies are fueled by corporate interests that support the Canadian government in its failure to hold the perpetrators of ethnocide and genocide accountable. Church officials have been given a pass while suicide rates, incarcerations rates, child protection removal rates, remain astonishingly high.
Some academics, such as Tom Flanagan who writes for the right-wing journal “UnHerd,” denied that unmarked graves were recently discovered on the ground of the residential school in Kamloops . . . or anywhere else. Another journal, “The Dorchester Review,” included a petition signed by genocide-denier academics who deny Indigenous human rights and blame Indigenous people for their own suffering.
The United Nations has declared that the crimes committed by agents of the Canadian state, at the behest of the Canadian state, including violence by members of the Catholic Church, constitute ethnocide and genocide.
None the less, in his 2008 non-apology apology, Prime Minister Stephen Harper concealed the responsibility of perpetrators who profoundly violated Indigenous children. The news cite, “The Conversation”, has a solid article on the topic of “passive language use” as a strategy for
concealing violence. https://theconversation.com/pope-franciss-apology-for-residentialschools-doesnt-acknowledge-institutional-responsibility-180526 Agentless constructions obscure ‘who did what to whom’, the extent and brutality of the violence, and the fact that Indigenous children and adults consistently resisted that violence with every means possible.
Canada, like other colonial nations, is built largely on the false narrative that good hearted pioneers pierced the largely vacant wilderness, saved Indigenous peoples from themselves, created prosperity with their endless ingenuity, and spawned a generation of nation builders. If the Pontiff was to tell the truth – a truth that is well known to many Canadians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – he would directly challenge this comforting Canadian-Colonial narrative.
What also remains invisible is the ever-presence of Indigenous responses, resistance and refusal. Advisors suggest focusing casting victims as passive and therefore unable to take care of themselves, and the land. As such, apologies can be twisted to focus on “I’m sorry you took
things so hard” rather than “I’m sorry for what I/we did (listing all the forms of violence and harm). In the land called Canada, settlement is seldom named as land theft. To see the history in that light would mean that Indigenous people had inherent value and rights, a discourse that
has been highly contested. Instead, we are cast as broken people who need things from white people, such as education, religion, culture, charity, childcare, and enlightenment.
This narrative relies on continued lies and more subtle forms of deception. Indigenous children were kidnapped from their families, often by police, imprisoned and tortured, isolated from their families and communities, and subjected to sexualized violence, often for many years. That these institutions are referred to as “residential schools” illustrates the deceptions that are still widely used. The prison camps were not “residences” and not “schools”. Even the term “prison camp” is minimizing: Inmates in Canadian prisons are generally treated much better
than were Indigenous children.
The lies are fully integrated in colonial society and Church mythology. Violence is called sex. Invasion is called settlement. Ethnocide is called education. Prisons are called residences. These distortions are carried in the Canadian criminal codes and national museums and school
text books of many colonial nations.
In terms of apology construction, controlling the narrative is paramount. Child prison camps become “residential schools,” violence becomes “trauma”, resistance is minimized to resilience and “reconciliation” is presented rather than “reparation.” In the context of violence, most
parties are uncomfortable with the terms placed upon them. For obvious reasons, perpetrators don’t like the term “perpetrator.” Victims tend to reject the term “victim” due to the societal shame in stigmatization.
The term “victim” now implies that you did something to bring on the violence, even if you are smaller, weaponless and lack access to institutional power. These days, being called a victim is akin to identity destruction, even for children. The term “survivor” isn’t great either because it does not acknowledge the ones who died. Where violence is concerned, people die due to the level of the brutality, not because of individual characteristics, lack of resistance or personality flaws.
Next comes the issue of responsibility. For what part of the violence will Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic church apologize? Will he explain the deliberate withholding of church documents or for creating the conditions of impunity for abusers? For protecting child rapists? To date, church employees who committed crimes against children have largely escaped charges and jail time.
What considerations were considered regarding the timing of the apology? Have advisors recommended delay? Did the discovery of child graves prompt the current visit or a genuine desire to try to make things right? For years, First Nations, Métis and Inuit families have requested information about their missing loved ones. Is the current decline in church membership a factor? The Pew Research Centre reports that half of all American adults raised in the Roman Catholic church have left the church at some point; church scandals have prompted the departure of parishioners in Italy and across Europe.
After Prime Minister Harper’s 2008 apology, his former speech writer Paul Bunner revealed that it was merely “a strategic attempt to kill the story.” Mr. Bunner reported being privy to derogatory and racist comments made by members of the Harper government between 2006
and 2009.
Financially, reports estimate Pope Francis’ visit could cost $60 million dollars, roughly the same amount used to operate residential schools for over 60 years. Indigenous advocates suggest that residential school compensation must be paid before any papal visit, along with full
disclosure of all related church documents. (See Jason Warick, Nov 5, 2021). Recently, the Roman Catholic church of Newfoundland were directed to sell (43?) properties to cover the claims of Mount Cashel orphanage abuse survivors. However, that particular compensation is not related to Indigenous survivors because there were no residential schools in Newfoundland.
I wonder how institutional apology advisors took up the situation of Indigenous parishioners themselves, or of non-Indigenous Canadians who align with calls for justice and repair. Some allies support a complete reorganization of Canadian society to include racial justice and
Indigenous self-governance. Every society includes people who speak out against injustice and systemic violence. As an activist, I am saddened by the absence of church folk standing alongside Indigenous people in land rights movements.
In the 80s, when seeking justice for Central America, liberation theologists spoke out against government abuses and attacks by US-backed right-wing militias. Church folk such as Bishop Oscar Romero, Ernesto Cardenal and the Jesuit priests killed by former President Alfredo Cristiani in El Salvador were notable in their care for the people combined with calls for social justice. I’m not saying this doesn’t exist in Canada, just not to the same extent. Returning at least part of what was stolen – land, prosperity, dignity- is key to reconciliation and to meaningful apologies.
In 2008, in a Yukon community, I witnessed Mr. Harper’s apologizing on television with several Kaska citizens. Yukon was the site of four residential schools as well as a number of residences and day schools. This included the notorious facility at Lower Post, B.C., which was said to house several active sexual predators. The room was quiet. Some men and women were crying. To them, this seemed like a very big, important event. It doesn’t mean they found the apology to be perfect, but there was something touching about it. Some called it Harper’s
“Non-Apology Apology”. The Prime Minister avoided mention the death of four-year-old Daniel Kangetok. Daniel was deliberately infected with an untreatable virus as part of a Defense Research Board experimental program funded by the Canadian military.
In reality, Indigenous Canadians and many other citizens are outraged. However, problematically, Indigenous people are cast as “traumatized”. Could this be the next point of the apology advisors – pathologize the victims so people won’t believe them? If people are cast as traumatized and mentally ill, it helps delegitimize their claims and concerns. While the use of the trauma discourse became everyday vocab around the time of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we might wonder who benefits from this languaging of events?
When was violence transformed into trauma? How did western psychology disappear colonization and dismantle solidarity through the individualization of suffering? If you seek psychological help in Quebec, it is likely they will personalize events, discuss your trauma an ignore present-day neo-colonialism. You may even be told that it is time to get over the past. Indigenous people have faced this colonial erasure from time to time in mainstream therapy. Being traumatized means you may be offered pharmaceutical drugs, CBT and mindfulness activities. There is no mention of dignity and justice. We can ask ourselves who benefits from this approach.
Right action can bring an apology to life. Truth and Reconciliation Chair Murray Sinclair has said that the PM failed to live up to the promise of the apology. Since then, the current Prime Minister has been blocking Supreme Court-ordered payments for First Nations children on reserve and arresting land defenders on their own lands in Wet’suwet’en territory. While some amounts have been paid, First Nations children have not yet received their due; by the way this does not apply to Métis and Inuit children. And yet, many of the services received are delivered by Canadian professionals who enact the colonial code. Canada has not implemented UNDRIP, particularly in the area of land and how earth is treated. Most of the land returns to date have been initiated by individual citizens wanting to promote rights and to correct past injustices.
The Canadian government has been prompted by corporate interests to deny Indigenous rights over Indigenous lands. For example, the Atlas Network, together with Ottawa-based think tank, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, have been actively undermining Indigenous land rights
and earth-care in Canada. They provide “a shield against opponents” by enlisting pro-industry Indigenous representatives to create the false impression that communities support extractivism. Atlas, which has links to conservative politicians and oil/gas producers, claimed success in their 2018 and 2020 reports, arguing its partner was able to discourage the Canadian government from supporting UNDRIP, which would have facilitated greater autonomy of Indigenous communities.
This method is not new. Indigenous performer, Buffy Sainte-Marie called it in her 1992- “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.” That tune points to CIA involvement and corporate uranium mining attempts to undermine Indigenous land rights and kill community members. She highlights the role of religion with
They got these energy companies who want the land
And they’ve got churches by the dozens, want to guide our hands
And sign our Mother Earth over to pollution, war and greed.
Going back to the time of Treaties and Scrip in Canada, similar conservative forces set up banks and land companies to profit from the stolen Indigenous land. The money that created Canada (banks, universities, railways, logging companies) funded the destruction of Indigenous communities and the killing of children.
I do not believe that Pope Francis’ apology will cover these numerous and monumental violations. He will be visiting Edmonton/Amiskwaciy Waskahikan, Québec/Kebec and Iqaluit. He is expected to meet with survivors at the Ermineskin Indian Residential School in Alberta before attending an Indigenous church in downtown Edmonton. He will then pay a visit to Wakamne/Manito Sahkahigan/Lac Ste Anne, the site of pilgrimages for Roman Catholics in Alberta. The Bishop of Rome will then go to Kebec/Quebec City for other events and meetings and head to Iqaluit before flying home. Many Indigenous people will be moved by this papal encounter. It will no doubt be moving and meaningful for those whose suffering has not been adequately acknowledged. Religion, after all, is supposed to be about love, gentleness and redemption. Historically, religion has not been about fairness. That may exist in heaven, if heaven exists, but not here on Earth. But you will see a great spirit of generosity on the part of Indigenous people, the same spirit that recently saw Indigenous communities offer our current prime minister a headdress and an honour dance.