‘Healing’ windows may go over row
Ownership focus of dispute in Attawapiskat
Five years after they were installed as a truth and reconciliation project, six stained-glass windows hanging in Attawapiskat’s Catholic church are at the centre of a dispute. And the local bishop says they will have to be removed if the disagreement about their ownership can’t be resolved.
The windows, which were made with the help of Northern Art Glass studio in Ottawa, depict the six Cree seasons and other images in soaring, colourful glass. They hang inside the community’s historic Catholic church, St. Francis Xavier, on the banks of the Attawapiskat River.
At the time they were installed, Jackie Hookimaw-Witt, the Attawapiskat resident who was behind the project along with her husband Norbert Witt, said the church was an ideal place for the healing project: “The church is like a central station where people meet, it’s a social institution.”
She and her husband made a video about the project, which they shot inside the church, calling it a meditative space. The windows were created by the couple and others with the support of a $50,000 grant from the Truth and Reconciliation Fund.
Now Hookimaw-Witt is at the centre of a bitter dispute in the parish, one that Bishop Robert Bourgon characterizes as an “obvious power struggle” and a private fight in the community.
“This is a minor squabble they are trying to make into more than it is,” he said.
“I am not playing this out. I am not going to make it a native-against-the-big-white-bishop (dispute). That is not going to happen.”
Part of that dispute revolves around who owns the stained-glass windows. If it is not resolved, the bishop has warned, the windows will have to be removed.
He added he is hopeful the community can find a “respectful and Christian” solution.
Hookimaw-Witt says the windows are for the community, but they belong to her and her husband because it was their project aimed at promoting healing and commemorating loved ones. Her parents and four of her siblings attended residential schools run by the Catholic Church.
Hookimaw-Witt said she fears the church, which its bishop admits is struggling financially, could close its doors and take the windows. There are no indications of plans to do so, but the bishop told her the church could be closed if it is not helpful to the community and conflicts cannot be resolved.
On Twitter she said: “These windows were for our healing … the bishop wants them removed.”
She acknowledged that the truth and reconciliation grant for the windows was handled through the church, but said it was understood “we were the owners of the windows.”
Bourgon disagrees. The church has documents, he said, “that indicate all of the funding was granted to the parish and used as intended and so the claim of personal ownership is unsubstantiated.”
He said when he arrived in the diocese he was told the windows — which he describes as “gorgeous” — were for the church and the community. He has since been told by Hookimaw-Witt that they belong to her and her husband.
In a bluntly-worded email to Hookimaw-Witt, the bishop wrote: “I note that … what you are now telling me is that the stained-glass windows are not church property as you indicated to me on my first visit to Attawapiskat … but rather are your personal works of art simply on display in your private gallery, the church in Attawapiskat.”
He added: “This is not acceptable. It would seem that something has been missed in all of this. If they are your personal property and not that of the church, then I will have to contact the insurance company and the assessment company to have these objects removed from coverage. It would then be a matter of discussion as to whether or not they were to remain in the building, since the diocese will not accept responsibility for anything that could happen to them.”
Bourgon continued that he would visit the community to “solve this problem” if issues over the windows and other disputes, such as use of church facilities, could not be resolved.
If problems in the church are as “wide-spread and community wide as you say,” he wrote to Hookimaw-Witt, “and the Church is not useful in the community, then I have the option of closing the parish, since the present situation is one in which I have to constantly beg for money to subsidize what is happening in Attawapiskat. The collections do not pay the Hydro bills let alone the water bills, food or even any pay for the priest.”
In an interview with the Citizen, Bourgon said he asked that the parish community work out any concerns itself, if possible. It was scheduled to meet to discuss that issue, and others, this week, but that meeting was postponed.
Hookimaw-Witt said she has also been told she can’t use church facilities for storage for stained-glass supplies or supplies for a youth program she runs. She has also raised questions about money she says was donated to the community and handled by the church. She said some community members received large cheques but then were told there was no more money.
Bourgon said the allegation about the donation is not true. “That is just somebody stirring the pot.”
Hookimaw-Witt, meanwhile, said she wants the windows to stay in the community. “They belong in the church.”
She added: “The bishop needs to think about how he is doing conflict resolution, by coming down with a hammer. That is not how you solve conflicts.”