Apology part of reconciliation: FSIN
Residential school survivors need to hear from the Pope, chief says
The Pope has a moral responsibility to apologize for the abuses children suffered at Indian residential schools run by the Catholic Church for more than 100 years, says Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN.)
“They have a moral obligation. It’s their godly duty, if you want to call it that. It’s part of their responsibility ... That’s reconciliation, apologize on behalf of the Church to the survivors,” Cameron said.
“All those former priests who are still alive and that have done this, they should do the same too,” he added.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, after meeting with Pope Francis Monday at the Vatican, said the pontiff seemed open to the idea of issuing an apology for the Church’s role in the abuses inflicted on children. He also said the Pope expressed enthusiasm for working with the Canadian bishops on an apology, as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Many survivors and their communities have been smarting since the revelation last year that Catholic entities in Canada had failed in their “best efforts” to raise $25 million for healing programs and had donated instead about $2 million. The Catholic entities had agreed to try to raise the $25 million in addition to $29 million for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and $25 million in in-kind services, both of which it did pay, according to Fr. Raymond J. De Souza.
“They sure shortchanged a lot of our survivors. It just opened the wounds,” Cameron said.
“We’re hoping there’s a change of attitude and a different direction.”
Eugene Arcand, who attended St. Michael’s Indian Residential School at Duck Lake, said survivors deserve an apology from the Vatican, which has long known about the calls to action.
“Surely, he could find it in his heart to come here and apologize. We shouldn’t have to go on our hands and knees again to this particular church to seek some level of dignity and redress for the destruction of generations of the first peoples of this country,” Arcand said.
Saskatchewan is the “logical” place for such an apology because 30 per cent of all survivors went to school here, he said.
Survivor Darwin Blind said it’s “very, very important” for the Pope to apologize.
“We’re not getting any younger,” said Blind, 70, who works as a therapeutic counsellor at the outpatient George Gordon Recovery and Wellness Centre.
“The need for programs to address the intergenerational harms of the schools continues,” he said.
“We lost so much as human beings. We lost our identity, we lost our way of life. Most children are nurtured by their parents, they get cared for. None of that happened to a lot of us. We missed that point. That’s something we’ll never get back. That affected a lot of people, including myself, with the ability to properly parent our own children.”
The emotional, physical and sexual abuse inflicted on children in the schools and the resulting addictions and social problems are the legacy that has instead been passed through the generations.
The damage didn’t stop with the closure of the schools or with the 10-year-long Healing Foundation created after former students sued the Government of Canada and the churches that ran the schools, Blind said.
“They gave us 10 years to fix ourselves. That’s a farce. They cut it off when it was working.”