Earlier this month the remains of 215 children were found by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in the former Kamloops Indian residential school in British Columbia, and I have been trying to understand this achy feeling in my heart. I was 100 years away from being born when the residential school system officially began as a government-funded, church-run project. When the last school closed in 1996, Canada was not even on my bucket list of countries I wanted to visit, let alone live in. That is how much of an outsider I am to this darkness, and yet I am so disturbed I feel responsible. It has taken me the whole month just to begin to understand why.
Initially I thought the news made me upset, beyond the fact that I have a heart, because they renewed a feeling of anger that has accompanied me throughout my entire life against the Catholic Church, as an institution. The Catholic Church has been involved in some of the most gruesome episodes of cruelty and disregard for human life and dignity, and I just have not been able to reconcile those episodes with the values that I always heard my grandma say god represented. She told me that god was about compassion and truthfulness, equality and inclusiveness, forgiveness and second chances, and I saw her practicing them every day for as long as she lived. Those sounded sensical and purposeful to me, and I try to follow her example, albeit detached from the idea of god, because I think it is possible to believe in them without any particular religious faith. But for the Catholic Church to separate itself from those values and do so in the name of god was and continues to be, in my eyes, an aberrant contradiction that I have never understood. I have not been able to match some of the actions of the Catholic Church with what the institution preaches. It angers me greatly, I must admit, and so I try to avoid thinking about it.
It was the Catholic Church the one running the Kamloops residential school, and my heart instinctively went to the anger that I have been so successful at avoiding for the past twenty years. The dormant anger awakened abruptly and felt very current and real.
This is not the first time I hear about the residential school system in Canada, but it is the first time I learn, for example, about a priest of the Catholic Church in Canada named Vital-Justin Grandin, who was a key architect of the horrific undertaking. Grandin said:
"We instill in them a pronounced distaste for the native life so that they will be humiliated when reminded of their origin. When they graduate from our institutions, the children have lost everything Native except their blood."
“Kill the Indian in the child” was the purpose of the system. More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were removed by force from their parents and taken to live in these government-funded, Church administered residential schools. Separation would prevent the transmission of cultural values from one generation to the next one until its complete extermination. These children were forbidden from speaking their native languages or practice their own culture, and they were severely punished if disobeying. They were also punished for no reason at all, through emotional, psychological and sexual abuse. A “cultural genocide,” as it has been rightfully defined.
The remains of 215 of these children were just found in unmarked gravesites, but these are not the only children who died. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), between 4100 and 6000 children died while in the residential school system, from diseases, accidents, neglect or suicide. The numbers are not certain.
The Canadian Prime Minister has asked the Catholic Church to take responsibility for its actions, and appointments with the Pope are being scheduled to ask for an apology and I just cannot understand why it is necessary to beg for an apology that should have come years ago without any solicitation or lobbying. There seems to be no remorse, no regret, no accountability in the heart of this institution.
So, there is the revived anger I feel against the Catholic Church. A feeling that makes me helpless, because I am not Catholic. Crusades didn’t just happen a thousand years ago. The inquisition is not just a medieval event that nobody thinks about. Genocide is not only physical. And I cannot even be disappointed. I can only be angry without remedy. Understanding this, however, did not explain to myself the entirety of my heartache. There is something more, something greater, more powerful, closer to me than my anger for an institution I don’t even belong to.
And then I thought of this: When I landed as a permanent resident in 2001, nobody told me about the Indian residential school system, and I certainly did not find anything about it in the booklet I had to study for my Citizenship exam in 2007. When the government of Canada finally apologized to former students and their families in 2008, I had only a minimal understanding of the colonial efforts that gave rise to a policy “designed to eliminate Aboriginal cultural and social distinctiveness,” a policy of which the residential schools were an integral part.
I am deeply troubled by my ignorance of Aboriginal peoples’ history in Canada, much more than I am about the role of the Catholic Church, because my ignorance can be remedied, and it is within my control. I should know by now much more than I know. A certificate of Citizenship says I am Canadian, and I am no longer sure I understand what that entails and what it means beyond the privilege I have been given. My heart is aching because I have taken for granted that privilege and I have not fully understood my responsibilities.
The consequences and the impact of the abuse suffered by the Aboriginal peoples in Canada since the colonizers invaded their lands are not things of the past. The pain of the former students and families of those who lived through the residential school system did not end with the financial compensation given to some of them. Their wounds were not closed with the government apology and will not close with the Catholic Church’s apology, if one is ever given. I admit that I don’t even know where to start the process of self-awareness, but I have to start it, even if I don’t have a method.
I have collected different materials, including those offered by the First Nations & Indigenous Studies of the University of British Columbia, and those found on the website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Greenpeace also makes important suggestions on what we all can do, including deepening our knowledge, requiring the Federal government to implement fully the TRC’s calls for action, and supporting Indigenous organizations. I have started to read and became a donor to the Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society. This is an open invitation to all of you to understand that this is not a past chapter in Canadian history, and that, while accountability may not lie with all of us, we are all responsible to educate ourselves and become part of the healing process.
