FSIN calls for Pope to visit Saskatchewan residential school site
The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations is calling on Pope Francis to add one of the province's residential school sites to the stops he plans to make during his July 2022 visit to Canada.
The Pope's four-day trip will likely include visits to Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit. In a news release, the FSIN said one of the Saskatchewan residential schools where graves were found should be part of that list.
More than 60 per cent of residential schools in Canada were run by the Catholic church. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 2015 report detailed mistreatment at the schools, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse. The TRC Calls to Action require the Pope to apologize on Canadian soil, and issue a formal letter of apology to the victims.
Along with the importance of apologizing on Treaty territory, the Pope needs to come to Saskatchewan “to witness for himself the reality we are facing today and the work our First Nations are conducting in finding the unmarked graves of hundreds of our children,” FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron said.
That could include the still-standing Muskowekwan Indian Residential School, where 35 graves were discovered.
Former chief of Okanese First Nation Marie-anne Day Walker-pelletier was among the Indigenous representatives from Saskatchewan who travelled to Rome recently to meet with Pope Francis and ask for an apology for the Catholic church's role in Canada's residential schools. The Pope offered an apology on April 1.
A residential school survivor, Day Walker-pelletier said she presented Pope Francis with two pairs of baby moccasins and asked in return that he bring them to the steps of a residential school in Saskatchewan, to show good faith in his apology and to acknowledge the harms committed by the church. The front steps of the Muskowekwan School would be “an ideal location” for the Pope to place those moccasins, she said.
“Our First Nations communities are still suffering greatly from the intergenerational traumas created by the harms committed within the walls of these schools. We welcome Pope Francis to walk within the same walls of the institutions that committed genocide against us through the theft and abuses of our children.”