In addition to an apology, representatives of the indigenous population demanded promises of other actions from the leader of the Catholic Church. The demands include monetary compensation, return of taken items and opening of archives.
Tanja Paananen,
Saana Uosukainen
24.7.•Updated 24.7.
The head of the Catholic Church, the Pope Francis has arrived in Canada. During his visit, he is expected to apologize for the mistreatment of the indigenous population by Catholic Church priests over the decades.
Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau received the Pope on Sunday at Edmonton International Airport.
During the flight, Pope Francis told reporters traveling with him that it was a “journey of repentance”.
The groups of the indigenous population announced before the visit that they demanded other actions in addition to an apology.
– There are those who think that an apology is not enough. We want action, says the leader of the union representing indigenous groups Bobby Cameron.
Survivors of ill-treatment and indigenous communities want monetary compensation, return of objects, support to bring the alleged abusers to justice. In addition, they want to make public the documents concerning the schools that operated between 1831 and 1996.
The Pope of the Catholic Church has not visited Canada in almost 20 years.
In the background, the burials of boarding schools
Last year, in British Columbia, Western Canada, the graves of 215 buried children were found in the yard of a former boarding school.
More than 150,000 children of the indigenous population were separated from their parents and some were mistreated in boarding schools over the decades. In the institutions, the native population was tried to be forcibly assimilated into the mainstream population. Schools were maintained by the state and churches.
The children were completely denied their own culture and were not allowed to speak their own language. Children were also often victims of violence and sexual abuse. Thousands of children disappeared in schools.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has called Canada guilty of cultural genocide. According to the commission that investigated the matter, more than 4,000 children died in schools due to diseases and neglect.
In 2008, the Canadian government issued an official apology for the schools.
According to the director of the Prairie and Indigenous Peoples Institute, which excavates the graves, the situation of the parents of the children who died in the institutions has been terrible.
– As a mother and an indigenous woman, I think a lot about what would have happened to my child if he had been born 100 years ago, says Kisha Supernant.
He says he thinks about how it must have felt to die a child far from home, often in pain, when the child would perhaps have been buried in a grave marked with a wooden cross.
– Often the parents did not know about the child’s death. The only way to know (about the death) was when the child did not return after years. The parents didn’t even get information about the grave site or what had happened.