Pope Francis’s six-day July “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada, July 24-30, is long over. but its fallout continues to haunt our country..The latest repercussion is a National Post opinion piece by the Bishop of Calgary, William McGrattan, also vice-president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Commenting on what he called the Pope’s “historic apology on Canadian soil,” albeit one that omitted the Pontiff’s mid-air departure confession to a reporter’s question asking whether members of his Church participated in genocide against the aboriginal people: “It's true, I didn't use the word [genocide] … but I described it… It's true, yes, yes, it's genocide. You can all stay calm about this. You can report that I said that it was genocide.”. Bishop William McGrattanBishop William McGrattan .What Bishop McGrattan did highlight about the Pope’s previous terrestrial apology was that: “The wounds that have been experienced by Indigenous peoples — through the suppression of languages, culture and spirituality, and through the various forms of physical, psychological and sexual abuse that took place at residential schools — are deep. We are all called to embrace these wounds as our own and walk forward in solidarity with those who are suffering, as exemplified by Pope Francis.”.His statement is well known as part of the Catholic Church’s current contrition narrative. But what is almost unknown is that this self-flagellation is fundamentally contrary to its traditional narrative, one supported by a mountain of evidence going back to first contact between the church and Canada’s indigenous people beginning in the early 17th century, all supported by an earlier papal statement:.“I know of the gratitude that you yourselves, the Indian and Inuit peoples, have towards the missionaries who have lived and died among you. What they have done for you is spoken of by the whole Church; it is known by the entire world. These missionaries endeavoured to live your life, to be like you in order to serve you and to bring you the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ..“Whatever faults and imperfections they had, whatever mistakes were made, together with whatever harm involuntarily resulted, they are now at pains to repair. But next to this entry, filed in the memory of your history, is the record, with endless proofs, of their fraternal love..“That marvellous rebirth of your culture and traditions which you are experiencing today owes much to the pioneering and continuing efforts of missionaries in linguistics, ethnography and anthropology... Yes, dear Indians and Inuit, the missionaries have always shared in your cultural and social life.”. Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II .These glad tidings were spoken by a Catholic pope. No, not Francis, the current one, a liberation theologian for whom a New Age social gospel trumps the age-old personal salvation one. Instead, they were uttered by Pope John Paul II — a traditionalist and stern critic of Marxist-based liberation theology — at the Yellowknife Airport in the Northwest Territories of Canada in 1984..Thirty-eight years later in 2022, Pope Francis delivered a far darker and less nuanced message in his penitential pilgrimage of confession and apology for the mostly unproven sins committed by members of his Church against indigenous children in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS). In his July 25 address on the grounds of the old Ermineskin Indian Residential School at Maskwacis in central Alberta, Pope Francis said: “I have come to your native lands to tell you in person of my sorrow…It is necessary to remember how the policies of assimilation and enfranchisement, which also included the residential school system, were devastating for the people of these lands. … Again, I think back on the stories you told: how the policies of assimilation ended up systematically marginalizing the Indigenous peoples; how also through the system of residential schools your languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed; how children suffered physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse; how they were taken away from their homes at a young age, and how that indelibly affected relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren..“In the face of this deplorable evil [cultural destruction and forced assimilation,] the Church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of her children.”.How can these two incompatible versions of the Catholic Church’s interaction with indigenous people be reconciled?.The most straightforward answer is that they can never be reconciled because the traditional one is based on western-style rationality and recorded historical reality going back centuries, while the current one was manufactured just as the last IRS closed in 1996 and is rooted in pre-scientific indigenous myth-making, mass hysteria, and financial demands. Anyone trying to dispassionately understand the historical record of the Church’s dealings with indigenous children while the IRSs were still in operation, not decades later when over $3 billion was paid out to former students for vilifying them with lightly examined claims, will find that, “Whatever faults and imperfections they had, whatever mistakes were made, together with whatever harm involuntarily resulted” were overwhelmed by “the fraternal love of” indigenous people and much admiration for indigenous culture and traditions..European contact and colonization did indeed contribute to profound changes to indigenous cultural and social life, including legal prohibitions of practices like polygamy, slavery, the purchase of wives, torture, and for many years, the potlatch. But neither the Catholic Church nor the schools its orders operated forcibly and genocidally assimilated indigenous people into accepting a Euro-Canadian Christian identity..To be sure, Catholic missionaries were, by their calling, engaged in proselytizing. Their methods, however, were neither forcible nor absolutist. There were no forced conversions or baptisms..The residential schools are presented as the primary instrument of a policy of “forced assimilation” based on universal attendance. But most indigenous children never attended a residential school despite the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair’s declaration to the United Nations in 2010 that, “For roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation.”.In fact, fewer than one-third of school-age “Status Indian” children, and an even smaller proportion of the general population of indigenous children, ever attended a residential school. Most children attended on-reserve day schools or, in later periods, integrated provincial schools. But attendance at day schools was abysmally low, and before the mid-20th century, as many as one-third of Indigenous children did not attend any school at all, the greatest tragedy of all..In 1920, Indian Affairs attempted to bring the indigenous population into compliance with provincial compulsory attendance laws through an amendment to the Indian Act. But the amendment did not require attendance at a residential school as such. Instead, it said, “Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is physically able shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated by the Superintendent General”... “Provided, however, that such school shall be the nearest available school of the kind required.” The Canadian compulsory school attendance laws were only loosely applied in the case of indigenous children, with forced attendance at the residential schools occurring primarily in cases of neglect or abuse in the home..As for the forced assimilation and cultural suppression posited by Pope Francis, the residential schools were committed to integrating indigenous and “Canadian” cultures, not eradicating indigenous cultures, a well-known and universal process called enculturation. The 1937 Indian Affairs Annual Report states, “Consideration has been given to ways and means whereby the Indian population can be encouraged to conserve still further their ancient values and skills and thus contribute to the cultural life of the nation.”.To this end, the residential schools aided the survival of innocuous indigenous traditions by incorporating traditional music, dance, and art into classes and school activities. The Indian Affairs reports and other sources are replete with examples of the residential schools’ encouragement of Indigenous cultural expression, including the following:.At the Cluny, Alberta school in 1938, students dressed in beaded costumes danced to the rhythm of Indian drums and war songs to an audience of over 300..In 1963, the school at Cardston hosted a troop of Blackfoot actors who showed a film on Blackfoot life in the early days, followed by a pageant depicting Blackfoot traditions and featuring a Sun Dance..The choir from the Portage La Prairie school sang in English and Cree at Expo ‘67 in Montreal..In the 1950s, the Gordon’s School in Saskatchewan established a powwow dance troupe that travelled extensively in Canada, the United States and several European countries..As for the charge of physical genocide, hopefully, Pope Francis was not comparing the indigenous experience in Canada with the Nazi Holocaust because there is not a single verified murder of any student at any residential school during their 113-year history..Yet some activists, indigenous and non-indigenous, have suggested such an equivalency employing an extraordinarily expansive definition of genocide. Others have alleged, with no credible evidence, that the schools practiced physical genocide through purposeful neglect and abuse and in some cases, even homicide. But the historical evidence shows that the opposite was true because the schools actively and compassionately promoted the physical well-being of the students..For example, by mid-20th century, the residential schools significantly reduced the scourge of tuberculosis that ravaged reserve communities through a comprehensive vaccination programme. And while residential school death rates were substantially higher than in the general Canadian school-age population in the early decades of school operations, by the mid-20th century, they were virtually equal.. Indian children in hospitalDene children in hospital at Fort Norman, NWT. .For example, many residential schools served as medical centres for surrounding communities to prevent and treat trachoma and other conditions in the Prairies in the 1930s. Rural schools in Canada were described at a 1919 Dominion Council of Health meeting as “not fit to raise swine in,” and as having inadequate heating and lacking playing areas. By comparison, most residential schools early on provided indoor and outdoor facilities for sports and exercise. In 1898, the Kuper Island School in 1898 built a “new gymnasium … [which] proves to be a very useful addition to the school, for besides giving opportunity for athletic and calisthenic sport, it is supplied with a permanent stage which makes it of great value for receptions and entertainments.”.At the Blood school, there was “Recreation three times a day after each meal, football, swimming, fishing, shooting with bows and arrows…Boys and girls each have their own playgrounds, and are always under the supervision of an attendant.”.Throughout the residential school era, particularly after World War II, residential school teams won numerous local, national and international championships in hockey, boxing, lacrosse, cross country skiing, and other sports. Although school administrators sometimes submitted complaints to Indian Affairs about the lack of funds to improve recreational facilities, the many sports successes could not have been achieved had the players not had access to good sports facilities and equipment..Residential schools also implemented the rigorous nutritional standards set by the Canadian government in the 1950s. The health benefits to the students were long-lasting. Research has found that residential school students were taller and less obese as adults than would have been the case if they had attended other kinds of schools. The residential schools also attended to students' nutritional needs in earlier periods. The 1925 Indian Affairs Annual Report states, “Milk herds are being tested [there was a concern broadly in Canada about diseases carried in milk] and the children's diet at these institutions carefully controlled. In the prairie provinces, travelling nurses visit Indian schools regularly to this end. The department is co-operating with the Canadian Junior Red Cross in the promotion of better health for Indian children.” Indian Affairs noted in its 1944 report that in outlying districts where the supply of vegetables was limited, the department distributed 13 tons of vegetable biscuits fortified with vitamin B flour..Some genocide that!.In summary, relations between Canada and the indigenous people have always been, and remain, complex. They have featured a continuum between enculturation and cultural assimilation, both voluntary. Occasionally, they involved the temporary legal suppression of traditional customs believed to be wasteful or inhumane. But in making sweeping assertions about forced assimilation and physical genocide, Pope Francis has distorted and defamed the history of Canada’s relations with its indigenous people. In doing so, he has committed a grave injustice against both his own church’s clergy and the indigenous people they were trying to help cope with the challenges of a rapidly evolving Canadian society..Hymie Rubenstein is the editor of The REAL Indian Residential Schools newsletter and a retired professor of anthropology at The University of Manitoba..Pim Wiebel, who worked for over three decades in indigenous community development and refugee resettlement, is a former Indian Residential School teacher.
Pope Francis’s six-day July “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada, July 24-30, is long over. but its fallout continues to haunt our country..The latest repercussion is a National Post opinion piece by the Bishop of Calgary, William McGrattan, also vice-president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Commenting on what he called the Pope’s “historic apology on Canadian soil,” albeit one that omitted the Pontiff’s mid-air departure confession to a reporter’s question asking whether members of his Church participated in genocide against the aboriginal people: “It's true, I didn't use the word [genocide] … but I described it… It's true, yes, yes, it's genocide. You can all stay calm about this. You can report that I said that it was genocide.”. Bishop William McGrattanBishop William McGrattan .What Bishop McGrattan did highlight about the Pope’s previous terrestrial apology was that: “The wounds that have been experienced by Indigenous peoples — through the suppression of languages, culture and spirituality, and through the various forms of physical, psychological and sexual abuse that took place at residential schools — are deep. We are all called to embrace these wounds as our own and walk forward in solidarity with those who are suffering, as exemplified by Pope Francis.”.His statement is well known as part of the Catholic Church’s current contrition narrative. But what is almost unknown is that this self-flagellation is fundamentally contrary to its traditional narrative, one supported by a mountain of evidence going back to first contact between the church and Canada’s indigenous people beginning in the early 17th century, all supported by an earlier papal statement:.“I know of the gratitude that you yourselves, the Indian and Inuit peoples, have towards the missionaries who have lived and died among you. What they have done for you is spoken of by the whole Church; it is known by the entire world. These missionaries endeavoured to live your life, to be like you in order to serve you and to bring you the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ..“Whatever faults and imperfections they had, whatever mistakes were made, together with whatever harm involuntarily resulted, they are now at pains to repair. But next to this entry, filed in the memory of your history, is the record, with endless proofs, of their fraternal love..“That marvellous rebirth of your culture and traditions which you are experiencing today owes much to the pioneering and continuing efforts of missionaries in linguistics, ethnography and anthropology... Yes, dear Indians and Inuit, the missionaries have always shared in your cultural and social life.”. Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II .These glad tidings were spoken by a Catholic pope. No, not Francis, the current one, a liberation theologian for whom a New Age social gospel trumps the age-old personal salvation one. Instead, they were uttered by Pope John Paul II — a traditionalist and stern critic of Marxist-based liberation theology — at the Yellowknife Airport in the Northwest Territories of Canada in 1984..Thirty-eight years later in 2022, Pope Francis delivered a far darker and less nuanced message in his penitential pilgrimage of confession and apology for the mostly unproven sins committed by members of his Church against indigenous children in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS). In his July 25 address on the grounds of the old Ermineskin Indian Residential School at Maskwacis in central Alberta, Pope Francis said: “I have come to your native lands to tell you in person of my sorrow…It is necessary to remember how the policies of assimilation and enfranchisement, which also included the residential school system, were devastating for the people of these lands. … Again, I think back on the stories you told: how the policies of assimilation ended up systematically marginalizing the Indigenous peoples; how also through the system of residential schools your languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed; how children suffered physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse; how they were taken away from their homes at a young age, and how that indelibly affected relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren..“In the face of this deplorable evil [cultural destruction and forced assimilation,] the Church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of her children.”.How can these two incompatible versions of the Catholic Church’s interaction with indigenous people be reconciled?.The most straightforward answer is that they can never be reconciled because the traditional one is based on western-style rationality and recorded historical reality going back centuries, while the current one was manufactured just as the last IRS closed in 1996 and is rooted in pre-scientific indigenous myth-making, mass hysteria, and financial demands. Anyone trying to dispassionately understand the historical record of the Church’s dealings with indigenous children while the IRSs were still in operation, not decades later when over $3 billion was paid out to former students for vilifying them with lightly examined claims, will find that, “Whatever faults and imperfections they had, whatever mistakes were made, together with whatever harm involuntarily resulted” were overwhelmed by “the fraternal love of” indigenous people and much admiration for indigenous culture and traditions..European contact and colonization did indeed contribute to profound changes to indigenous cultural and social life, including legal prohibitions of practices like polygamy, slavery, the purchase of wives, torture, and for many years, the potlatch. But neither the Catholic Church nor the schools its orders operated forcibly and genocidally assimilated indigenous people into accepting a Euro-Canadian Christian identity..To be sure, Catholic missionaries were, by their calling, engaged in proselytizing. Their methods, however, were neither forcible nor absolutist. There were no forced conversions or baptisms..The residential schools are presented as the primary instrument of a policy of “forced assimilation” based on universal attendance. But most indigenous children never attended a residential school despite the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair’s declaration to the United Nations in 2010 that, “For roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation.”.In fact, fewer than one-third of school-age “Status Indian” children, and an even smaller proportion of the general population of indigenous children, ever attended a residential school. Most children attended on-reserve day schools or, in later periods, integrated provincial schools. But attendance at day schools was abysmally low, and before the mid-20th century, as many as one-third of Indigenous children did not attend any school at all, the greatest tragedy of all..In 1920, Indian Affairs attempted to bring the indigenous population into compliance with provincial compulsory attendance laws through an amendment to the Indian Act. But the amendment did not require attendance at a residential school as such. Instead, it said, “Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is physically able shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated by the Superintendent General”... “Provided, however, that such school shall be the nearest available school of the kind required.” The Canadian compulsory school attendance laws were only loosely applied in the case of indigenous children, with forced attendance at the residential schools occurring primarily in cases of neglect or abuse in the home..As for the forced assimilation and cultural suppression posited by Pope Francis, the residential schools were committed to integrating indigenous and “Canadian” cultures, not eradicating indigenous cultures, a well-known and universal process called enculturation. The 1937 Indian Affairs Annual Report states, “Consideration has been given to ways and means whereby the Indian population can be encouraged to conserve still further their ancient values and skills and thus contribute to the cultural life of the nation.”.To this end, the residential schools aided the survival of innocuous indigenous traditions by incorporating traditional music, dance, and art into classes and school activities. The Indian Affairs reports and other sources are replete with examples of the residential schools’ encouragement of Indigenous cultural expression, including the following:.At the Cluny, Alberta school in 1938, students dressed in beaded costumes danced to the rhythm of Indian drums and war songs to an audience of over 300..In 1963, the school at Cardston hosted a troop of Blackfoot actors who showed a film on Blackfoot life in the early days, followed by a pageant depicting Blackfoot traditions and featuring a Sun Dance..The choir from the Portage La Prairie school sang in English and Cree at Expo ‘67 in Montreal..In the 1950s, the Gordon’s School in Saskatchewan established a powwow dance troupe that travelled extensively in Canada, the United States and several European countries..As for the charge of physical genocide, hopefully, Pope Francis was not comparing the indigenous experience in Canada with the Nazi Holocaust because there is not a single verified murder of any student at any residential school during their 113-year history..Yet some activists, indigenous and non-indigenous, have suggested such an equivalency employing an extraordinarily expansive definition of genocide. Others have alleged, with no credible evidence, that the schools practiced physical genocide through purposeful neglect and abuse and in some cases, even homicide. But the historical evidence shows that the opposite was true because the schools actively and compassionately promoted the physical well-being of the students..For example, by mid-20th century, the residential schools significantly reduced the scourge of tuberculosis that ravaged reserve communities through a comprehensive vaccination programme. And while residential school death rates were substantially higher than in the general Canadian school-age population in the early decades of school operations, by the mid-20th century, they were virtually equal.. Indian children in hospitalDene children in hospital at Fort Norman, NWT. .For example, many residential schools served as medical centres for surrounding communities to prevent and treat trachoma and other conditions in the Prairies in the 1930s. Rural schools in Canada were described at a 1919 Dominion Council of Health meeting as “not fit to raise swine in,” and as having inadequate heating and lacking playing areas. By comparison, most residential schools early on provided indoor and outdoor facilities for sports and exercise. In 1898, the Kuper Island School in 1898 built a “new gymnasium … [which] proves to be a very useful addition to the school, for besides giving opportunity for athletic and calisthenic sport, it is supplied with a permanent stage which makes it of great value for receptions and entertainments.”.At the Blood school, there was “Recreation three times a day after each meal, football, swimming, fishing, shooting with bows and arrows…Boys and girls each have their own playgrounds, and are always under the supervision of an attendant.”.Throughout the residential school era, particularly after World War II, residential school teams won numerous local, national and international championships in hockey, boxing, lacrosse, cross country skiing, and other sports. Although school administrators sometimes submitted complaints to Indian Affairs about the lack of funds to improve recreational facilities, the many sports successes could not have been achieved had the players not had access to good sports facilities and equipment..Residential schools also implemented the rigorous nutritional standards set by the Canadian government in the 1950s. The health benefits to the students were long-lasting. Research has found that residential school students were taller and less obese as adults than would have been the case if they had attended other kinds of schools. The residential schools also attended to students' nutritional needs in earlier periods. The 1925 Indian Affairs Annual Report states, “Milk herds are being tested [there was a concern broadly in Canada about diseases carried in milk] and the children's diet at these institutions carefully controlled. In the prairie provinces, travelling nurses visit Indian schools regularly to this end. The department is co-operating with the Canadian Junior Red Cross in the promotion of better health for Indian children.” Indian Affairs noted in its 1944 report that in outlying districts where the supply of vegetables was limited, the department distributed 13 tons of vegetable biscuits fortified with vitamin B flour..Some genocide that!.In summary, relations between Canada and the indigenous people have always been, and remain, complex. They have featured a continuum between enculturation and cultural assimilation, both voluntary. Occasionally, they involved the temporary legal suppression of traditional customs believed to be wasteful or inhumane. But in making sweeping assertions about forced assimilation and physical genocide, Pope Francis has distorted and defamed the history of Canada’s relations with its indigenous people. In doing so, he has committed a grave injustice against both his own church’s clergy and the indigenous people they were trying to help cope with the challenges of a rapidly evolving Canadian society..Hymie Rubenstein is the editor of The REAL Indian Residential Schools newsletter and a retired professor of anthropology at The University of Manitoba..Pim Wiebel, who worked for over three decades in indigenous community development and refugee resettlement, is a former Indian Residential School teacher.
