The Day of Reckoning
On the banks of the South Thompson River, in a valley surrounded by semi-arid hillsides, the wind blows unobstructed. Neither crosses nor tombstones impede its journey over the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Beneath the earth, whispers of children have been calling us. They have been calling for years, only to have their voices evaporate into the ether. And if it were not for a radar search organized by a local First Nations band, they might never have been found.
What the search found were the remains of 215 Indigenous children, some reportedly as young as three years old, who died while attending this residential school.
The Kamloops school was operated by the Catholic Church from 1890-1969. It was one of the largest of over 130 residential schools spread across Canada; a system that in the words of one of its architects was designed to “get rid of the Indian problem” by stripping the Indigenous population of their language and culture, and indoctrinating their children in the ways of the white man. Nowadays one might call this cultural genocide. And as is often the case throughout history, it was sponsored by a malevolent partnership between church and state.
Three out of the four major churches have taken responsibility for their role in Canada’s residential school system: the Anglican Church in 1993, the Presbyterian Church in 1994, and the United Church in 1998. Even the Canadian government came clean in 2008. Indeed, every major institution has taken accountability except the Catholic Church, even though nearly three-quarters of residential schools were Catholic-run.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued 94 calls to action to foster reconciliation with Canada’s residential school history. The 58th recommendation is an interesting one: it calls on the Pope to issue an apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the abuse of Indigenous children in Catholic-run residential schools.
The Church refuses to do so because of its decentralized structure, with each diocese having its own autonomy (and in their view, accountability). A few of the individual dioceses have apologized but never the Church as a whole. The closest it came was in 2009 when Pope Benedict XVI voiced “sorrow” for residential schools. (He said this to a private audience with no cameras or recordings.) In 2018, the Canadian House of Commons voted 269-10, across party lines, on a motion urging the Pope to make good on the 58th recommendation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even implored Pope Francis personally, as did some Canadian bishops.
Now, with news of the 215 unmarked graves spread across the world, it would appear the Catholic day of reckoning has finally come. And yet only days ago, Pope Francis seemed to fall back on his predecessor, expressing “sorrow” at this “sad affair”, as if it were one step removed from the institution that ran it.
In 2018, I started a petition to enact the 58th recommendation of the TRC. It went nowhere and flatlined at a hundred signatures. But I never took it down and in the last few days it has grown to over 1500 people, even though I did nothing to revive it. Evidently, there are a growing number of Canadians who are feeling this issue more deeply.
Whether these kids died from disease, malnourishment, or abuse, we do not know. What we do know is the priests and nuns who ran this school never did a single thing to mark their existence. As children died under their care, they left neither crooked crosses nor a nameless monument. Neither did they report the truth to the government; to say nothing of the parents. Worst of all, they never heeded their higher mandate: to do unto these children as they would have done unto their own.
One of the central doctrines of the Catholic Church is the sacrament of penance. It is the Catholic recipe for how spiritual healing occurs. It allows us to not be held prisoner by our past by freeing both the forgiver and the forgiven, which is why it is so painful for Indigenous Peoples to see the supreme pontiff avoid it. There can be no reparation without a confession, and there can be no confession without contrition.
I was born and raised Catholic. There are almost 13 million of us in Canada. I’m willing to bet this does not sit well with many of us. Deep in the marble hallways of the Vatican, I doubt it sits well there either. For amid the outcry of Canadians, the half-mast flags, and the thousands of tiny shoes gathered as memorials across the country, one can’t help but pause in a moment of silence, and notice the whispers of 215 children have finally been heard.
Note: In honour of National Indigenous History Month in Canada, I have made the ebook version of my novel A Child is a Piece of Paper free on most platforms such as Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Barns & Noble. The novel follows the tragic ripple effects of these Catholic-run residential schools and some of the very same issues raised by the recent Kamloops discovery.
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Thank you for continuing to be a compelling and strong voice about the legacy of residential schools, Lance. I am so proud that you are my brother-in-law.