Episode 3: Impact of Assimilation | Understanding Indigenous History: A Path Forward

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Episode 3 of "Understanding Indigenous History: A Path Forward" explores the harrowing history of Canada's assimilation policies, focusing on the Indian Act and the residential school system. The episode details Phil Fontaine's personal experiences as a residential school survivor, shedding light on the systemic abuse endured by Indigenous children. The narrative highlights the discovery of unmarked graves, the historical denials, and the eventual acknowledgment and apologies from the Catholic Church. This emotionally charged discussion underscores the importance of truth, reconciliation, and the need to address historical injustices for a better future.

Highlights

Phil Fontaine's emotional recount of his experiences at a residential school provides a personal insight into the widespread abuses. 😢
The episode discusses the institutionalization of assimilation policies and their devastating impacts. 🏛️
Revelations about unmarked graves at former residential school sites have shocked the nation and prompted calls for further investigation. 📢
A lack of funding and regulation for residential schools highlights the intention of assimilation rather than education. 💵
Despite apologies from figures like Pope Francis, there is a continued struggle for full accountability and reparations from the church. ⛪
The denial of these historical truths perpetuates injustices and hinders reconciliation efforts. 🚫

Key Takeaways

Assimilation policies in Canada, particularly through residential schools, have caused deep harm to Indigenous communities. 🏫
The discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites has been a pivotal moment in raising awareness and acknowledgment of past atrocities. ⚰️
The Catholic Church and the Canadian government have faced significant pressure and criticism for their roles in the systemic abuse within residential schools. 🇨🇦
Survivors such as Phil Fontaine have been crucial in bringing these stories to light, leading to apologies and the start of reconciliation efforts. 🙌
There is still ongoing denial and resistance to accepting the full extent of the abuses, making education and acknowledgment vital. 📚
The journey towards reconciliation includes addressing all layers of past wrongs, from the '60s scoop to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. 🔍

Overview

Episode 3 of "Understanding Indigenous History: A Path Forward" offers a raw and heart-wrenching exploration of the assimilation policies forced upon Indigenous peoples in Canada, particularly through the residential school system. The episode features shocking accounts, like Phil Fontaine's, detailing the abuses and traumas inflicted upon countless Indigenous children.

The episode also addresses the broader implications of these policies, such as the recent discoveries of unmarked graves that have caught national attention. This has prompted a reevaluation of Canada's historical narrative and the crucial need for education, acknowledgment, and understanding.

Despite progress, the episode makes it clear that reconciliation is an ongoing struggle, as denials and resistance to truth continue to obfuscate justice. It emphasizes the importance of continuing dialogues and efforts to right the wrongs of the past, offering hope for a future built on truth and respect.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter titled 'Introduction' begins with a reminder of the previous session, where topics such as treaties and the Indian Act were discussed. It highlights how assimilation policies were institutionalized through legislation like the Indian Act and the residential school system, setting the stage for further discussion.
00:30 - 01:00: Acknowledgment of Traditional Territories The chapter begins with a sensitive note, warning the audience about discussions on specific instances of abuse that might be triggering, particularly for survivors, including those experiencing intergenerational trauma. It encourages those affected to reach out to trusted individuals for support. The speaker acknowledges the conversation's location on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. This acknowledgment is vital in recognizing the ongoing connections of Indigenous peoples to their lands and is a step towards honoring their history and presence.
01:00 - 02:00: Kamloops Residential School Discovery The chapter titled 'Kamloops Residential School Discovery' delves into the discovery of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. It emphasizes the devastating impact of the country's assimilation policies on Indigenous communities. The narrative raises critical questions, including the whereabouts of many missing Indigenous children who attended such schools. The chapter reflects on the community's shared trauma and the horrific discovery that there could potentially be children buried at the site.
02:00 - 03:00: Personal Testimonies of Residential School Experiences This chapter titled "Personal Testimonies of Residential School Experiences," delves into the tragic and distressing history of residential schools in Canada. Specifically, it discusses the discovery of unmarked graves of schoolchildren in Kamloops, British Columbia, and acknowledges similar reports of unmarked graves across Canada. It reveals the haunting presence of over 2,300 suspected burial sites linked to these institutions, drawing attention to the systemic oppression faced by Indigenous communities and the need for reconciliation and acknowledgment of these past atrocities.
03:00 - 04:30: Visits to the School and First Experiences Phil Fontaine, one of the first residential school survivors, shared his early experiences as a young boy in a landmark interview with the CBC. He revealed that all 20 boys in his Grade 3 class underwent similar experiences, highlighting the widespread nature of their shared experiences.
04:30 - 06:00: Name Change and Separation from Family This chapter discusses the revelation of a significant truth by a well-known personality around the years 1990-1991. The speaker reflects on the vivid memory of when this revelation was broadcasted on television, highlighting its impact. The topic evokes anger as it underscores the ignorance or denial of many Canadians about the matter, attributing this to a lack of educational emphasis in schools. The conversation hints at a personal connection and emotional difficulty for the person revealing this truth, pointing to themes of identity change and familial separation.
06:00 - 08:00: School Environment and Discipline In this chapter titled 'School Environment and Discipline,' the narrative begins with a reflection on the process of educating and re-educating, a theme that has been prevalent in previous episodes. The discussion shifts to personal recollections of anticipating school life, specifically focusing on the early memories of being at home and receiving the news about attending a distant school. This chapter highlights an acute awareness of the residential school located on their reserve, hinting at the cultural and psychological implications surrounding this experience.
08:00 - 10:00: Revealing the Abuse The chapter titled 'Revealing the Abuse' discusses a personal narrative involving a family visit to the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School. The narrator recounts a trip with their parents and late sister, Thelma, using a sleigh and horses. During this journey, they faced a perilous situation when the horses broke through the ice, highlighting the dangers and challenges faced by families during this historical period.
10:00 - 15:00: Legal and Historical Context The chapter discusses a particular event involving a family visiting a bank. During the visit, the father safely retrieves the horses and they continue their journey on a sleigh.
15:00 - 18:40: Government and Church Accountability The chapter discusses the management of school visits, particularly when families visit older siblings who are students there. It highlights the structure of the school, referencing specific areas like the 'boy's playroom' which was designated for visits.
18:40 - 22:00: Denialism and Historical Recognition This chapter explores the concept of denialism and the struggles associated with historical recognition. It begins with a narrative about a place known as the preventorium, which was originally designated for visiting but later repurposed for students suffering from tuberculosis (TB). The preventorium was intended to accommodate students from various communities, providing a common space where parents could visit their children, particularly on Sundays. The narrative also touches upon how different schools imposed varying levels of regulation and control during these visits.
22:00 - 27:00: Papal Apology and Reconciliation Efforts The chapter discusses the visits allowed to children by some institutions, which included restrictions on seeing their parents or siblings on weekends. It highlights a particular case where visits were allowed on Sundays, during which time was spent in a preventorium. Families were separated in different parts of a boy's playroom, but this arrangement changed once a community hall was built.
27:00 - 30:00: Conclusion and Reflection In this chapter, the discussion reflects on the past practices regarding visitations with parents, which were held at the band hall on Sundays back in 1951. It notes the proximity of the school to home, a situation that was not common for many other children at the time.

Episode 3: Impact of Assimilation | Understanding Indigenous History: A Path Forward Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 [Music] In our last session we talked about treaties and the Indian Act. The assimilation policies were institutionalized through the Indian Act and in the residential school system. And before we get
00:30 - 01:00 to that, a warning. This conversation will detail specific instances of abuse and may be triggering to some. For survivors, including intergenerational survivors, please reach out to someone you trust to help navigate the emotions that may come up during this conversation. I'm going to acknowledge once again that we are on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. It was May 2021 that Canadians got a stark
01:00 - 01:30 reminder about the harmful effects of Canada's assimilation policies. There's a lot of unanswered questions. Where did these missing children go? We were brought together. We shared the unthinkable, the horrific initial findings that there could very well be children beneath the
01:30 - 02:00 surface. Just about 4 hours northeast of here is Kamloops, British Columbia. And it was at the site of the former residential school that as many as 215 school children were buried in unmarked graves. Since then, First Nations across Canada have reported evidence of the remains of more than 2,300 children in suspected unmarked graves at or near former residential schools. The
02:00 - 02:30 number though is believed to be much higher. Phil Fontaine is one of the first residential school survivors to publicly detail his experiences as a small boy. In fact, it was in a landmark interview with the CBC. My Grade 3 class if there were 20 boys in this particular class, every single one of the 20 would have experienced what I experienced. Phil, I remember that interview
02:30 - 03:00 when it aired on television so vividly. I think because it really was the first time such a well-known person as you were in '90-'91 was revealing such a shocking truth. And it angers me that so much of Canada either didn't know it or chose to not know it. I certainly did not know these details, didn't learn it in school, which must be even harder for you to
03:00 - 03:30 know that you're educating and re-educating as we've been saying in the in the past episodes. Tell me if you can your earliest memory of being at home and being told you're going to go to this school far away. I was well aware of the residential school that was situated on a reserve
03:30 - 04:00 know then as the fort Alexander Indian reserve. So the school was the Fort Alexander Indian residential school. Because one Sunday my dad, my late father, and mother, and my late sister Thelma and I went on a sleigh horses, sleigh to go visit the brothers at the school and the team of horses broke through the ice on the way. So our, my father bundled us up including my
04:00 - 04:30 Mom, and took us at the bank to go wait for him. And he got the horses out safely, went up the bank to bring us down, back down onto the sleigh and carried on to the
04:30 - 05:00 school. And that was to visit my older siblings that were students at the school and so I knew how these visits were managed. At one point they were on our side of the school. They called it the boy's playroom. So that's where they used to visit.
05:00 - 05:30 Then at some point that place of for visiting was transferred to the preventorium they called it. The preventorium was going to be a place for students suffering from TB and they were going to be brought in from different communities. And on Sundays, that's where the parents would gather to visit children. I know every school was different in how they policed, if I can use
05:30 - 06:00 that term, those visits some didn't even allow the children to see their parents or their siblings on a weekend. Yours did. Sundays. Sundays. And as I said the time was spent in the preventorium. Those, you know, the families would be situated in different parts of the of the boy's playroom and that all changed when the community built a hall, a community hall in
06:00 - 06:30 1951. Yeah and so that then all of those visits with parents took place at the at the hall, the band hall we called it, on Sundays. So your school was close enough to your home. We know again that was not the case for so many children
06:30 - 07:00 taken hundreds of miles, kilometers from their homes. Was it something you looked forward to? Going to the school? Well I was intrigued, is not the word, but I wondered about the school. It was big and had you know 100, 150 boys and girls at the school and uh the day I
07:00 - 07:30 went, my mom because my dad was not well, took me to the school. And I had soup with my brother Glen and his cousin Rudy, and the nun came over and asked me my name and I said Larry, Larry Fontaine because that was my name. And my mom had disappeared. My mom was
07:30 - 08:00 no longer around. Then I realized that I was at school and my mom was back at home. So it was Sundays, Sundays were the toughest part of my time there in the early years
08:00 - 08:30 of my schooling at the at the residential school. Because my mother would come and we'd have two hours and every every time it was time for her to leave I was the youngest. I was a little boy how old I was six turned seven at my first year, so I was the baby boy and my my sister Thelma
08:30 - 09:00 was not old enough for rez school and Andre was born June '51 so I was the youngest and it was just tragic for me. I mean, I don't want to embellish this thing but I would cry like wouldn't believe. I'd try and run away from the crowd that was going back to the school and I remember one on one visit, Brother Moran took me on his shoulder, carried me back to the
09:00 - 09:30 school and I was wailing the whole time. Wailing because a child would miss their parent. First of all, miss home. But also, what was the environment like inside that school that you can remember. Church every day, every morning in the winter, if it was too cold we'd have mass, daily mass in the school chapel and then you'd come back, you'd have breakfast and then played around a
09:30 - 10:00 bit and then classrooms for the rest of the time and it was just a time of confusion. Wondered what, you know, what this was all about. I was learning to read, I was learning to count and I was, I saw cousins at the school and
10:00 - 10:30 I was scared of the dark because these dormitories were dark and I wasn't, I was never very good at hand handling the dark and so, darkness takes
10:30 - 11:00 on a totally different meaning when there's also abusive elements unfolding wherever especially for a child I can imagine. Well the discipline was so completely different than what I experienced at home right? Larry became Phillip right? So they changed your name. Well my, on my certificate
11:00 - 11:30 my baptismal certificate it's Larry Philip Fontaine so my mom and dad chose Larry as my first name. When she comes to visit me the next, the Sunday after I was admitted to school, the sister pretty much announced to my mom that Phillip would be my name in the school
11:30 - 12:00 and but she said "but his name is Larry." Well, we think it's better if his name was Phillip. So I became Phillip and I didn't appreciate the significance of that other than the nun's explanation that Philip was an apostle but Larry wasn't, so it's just keeping in the within the teachings of the school and in the church. And of course stripping a parent of the right to
12:00 - 12:30 name their own child. Yeah. But it was always a struggle just tore me, tore me up inside to see my mom leave right? Did you ever reveal to her any of the things that were happening? Or was there not an opportunity or did you really just keep it all inside until you revealed it so publicly? Well there's two aspects to this, or three. The separation, which
12:30 - 13:00 was the most tragic and in my experience, for the first seven years of my schooling at the residential school, the separation from my mom and my family because our father died during my first year at residential school. So no more father but my mom right? And it, I never got over that
13:00 - 13:30 during my lifetime. Did they allow you to go to the funeral? Oh yes, yeah. The wake was at our home, it was traditional to have it at the home. And we had the wake at the home then the funeral at the church. Packed church and then back to school. And it was all confusing when my mom came to
13:30 - 14:00 the school to tell her her sons that their father was gone, and I wondered what that, what that meant. He was gone and the nun explained to me what my mom meant. And I don't think it was something that I could understand right? Because I just couldn't understand
14:00 - 14:30 that. So that stayed with me, stayed with me for a lifetime. We weren't very far from home. they could have allowed us to go home on weekends for example, spend family time on the weekends and come back but that wasn't part of the school policy. So that was
14:30 - 15:00 very very difficult and then I was a picky eater, very picky eater. And I didn't like a lot of the food and I always struggled, and there were times when people when the boys threw food on the on the floor, and I may have done that at one point, but then someone at one of our, at lunchtime, they called it dinner, someone had thrown a sandwich, bread and meat, and the nun
15:00 - 15:30 blamed me for it. She made me eat the goddamn thing, and the floor is dirty. The food that had been on the floor was dirty and she made me eat it. Called me, what? She called me a king, you see because I was a spoiled guy in her view and told the other boys there, watch the king
15:30 - 16:00 eat and I was forced to eat that. Humiliating. It was humiliating. It was dreadful. It was, man. And you couldn't cry, right? Because you just had to take your lumps, the punishment. So that happened a number of times. And I told my mom about it and so the two
16:00 - 16:30 nuns came to my mother and the superior asked me if it was true that this nun had been mean to me and had forced me to do that, and my mom is there and I'm too goddamn chicken right? To say "yeah, yeah she's been mean to me. She's been mean to me." I said "no" and
16:30 - 17:00 that was the end of it. So it was, in effect, carte blanche for her at that point. And that was, that happened more than once. These tales now since the whole residential school reality is now common knowledge, the tales of abuse are so horrifying, absolutely horrifying, and I can only
17:00 - 17:30 imagine for you and so many who suffered it how challenging it is to recognize the importance of revealing it out loud and yet you're still coping with it. I can clearly see that. I would never suggest that my experiences in rez achool were worse than others. I mean, what
17:30 - 18:00 I experienced was not unique in any way. It was something that other students experienced to different degrees. The abuse, the physical abuse, for example, was pretty routine. Pretty routine. And
18:00 - 18:30 and then the sexual abuse was also not something that was unique to me, or to boys, or you know, classmates. I mean know, whole, there was a whole number of the boys that were, that experienced what I experienced. And in my young mind, I had an
18:30 - 19:00 appreciation that what I, what I was experiencing wasn't right. It wasn't right, and the other boys of course you know thought about it or figured it out in the same way I did, that it wasn't right but our coping mechanism was to laugh about it let's just tease each
19:00 - 19:30 other briefly about you know, the experience and that's just how it went on. And then you couple that with bullying and bullies that were no different than the priest, right? And you couldn't tell anyone about that kind of stuff, right? I never told
19:30 - 20:00 my mom, ever or or my siblings. But in 1990, you told Barbara Frum that you know every child in your Grade 3 class in my classroom had been abused. The boys, by the same person. Sexually abused? Physically abuse? No no no sexual, it was sexual, and it was a weird. It's a weird
20:00 - 20:30 experience, you know it's like it was open confession and then and then your body, right? And you found now that this is all so public, it took you 30 years, though, of fighting that to make this something nobody can deny now. Well the people that deny it, and there
20:30 - 21:00 are some would be based on the degree of the abuse. How extensive was it? Was it really abuse? Was it just a misguided kind of interpretation on our part that maybe it wasn't?
21:00 - 21:30 Maybe what he was doing was really quite helpful and a part of our routine, right? And so that's how we figured it out. And I remember my oldest brother, who is gone now, telling me about his own experience when the priest wanted to engage him in this ritual and he told my
21:30 - 22:00 oldest brother Jim, said "Father I have a girlfriend for goodness sakes. I have a girlfriend, you know? So you did, you were able to share this with your family but much later or at the time? No, well it, it's funny you know, boys that get together siblings, and others and it was
22:00 - 22:30 a big joke. It was, was a joke you just laughed about it. The coping mechanism. It was to me, I'm sure it was to others and you know, your name would be written in a on a piece of paper, the teacher would get the name and come to you and that, was after
22:30 - 23:00 another class, a classmate that come back from his little adventure. So you'd go and the boys would say, would whisper what was about to occur. Everybody knew. On on the boy side, yes. The girls maybe as well but they never concerned themselves about it. But we had the
23:00 - 23:30 word for it. And that's what, that's how we described this. What was your word for it? Gizibliga’lgaazo. Gizibliga’lgaazo. Is that Ojibwe? Ojibwe, yeah. What does it mean? You were washed. You were cleaned.
23:30 - 24:00 Or you're going to get washed, or words like that, yeah. Was there fear attached to that? First time, no. I don't think there was any ever any fear. It was a sense of more embarrassment more about wondering why and it was a
24:00 - 24:30 ritualistic kind of moment. You told your stories, right? To cleanse your mind of these impure thoughts and thinking about girls for example, and so to clear your soul of the
24:30 - 25:00 impurities. And the only way you could do that, was to clean yourself as well. And so that was the ritual, the priest is standing there, standing there and helping. You know, these, I hate even using the word story, and I hate using the word school,
25:00 - 25:30 to be honest. This is a government sanctioned institutions that 150,000 children made their way through. Yours is one story that is just a horror to hear. So, my name is Laura Arndt. I'm joining you today at the Mohawk Institute. My mother was was one of many who attended the
25:30 - 26:00 school during its 140 years of operation and there's a lot of, as many would say, bad history here especially in this basement. I think of my role now as the Secretariat Lead I am working with survivors associated with 57 communities across Canada who attended the school. 15,000 attended the school, is the estimation in its 140 years of operation. Think of
26:00 - 26:30 140 years of children walking in the front door, coming down here and starting their experience in this basement. They would play down here, if that's what you call it, they would eat down here and they'd also come down here for punishment. I think of my own mom in this school and it took her 70 years to come back just to stand outside. Lasted here about 40 minutes and said "I got to
26:30 - 27:00 go." I think of the role of the Anglican Church, the New England company, Canada, in the operation of the school. It's the longest running, so the records are everywhere. 15,000 kids as I said. Over the course of our work, we've been able to track the names of about 4,600 children. I mean the sad and scariest part in the history of the school, is kids didn't realize how close they were to home.
27:00 - 27:30 Like they didn't realize how close they were to home. Phil Fontaine whether he will remember me or not, and I sat at an event almost 20 years ago, and it was Holocaust Survivor event, and he spoke as an indigenous person, and when he sat and he spoke about genocide, and I like to say that I think he was using the word genocide before the TRC. And he was using it before Murdered and
27:30 - 28:00 Missing, and I think the pairing of Holocaust survivors and our genocide, part of that is is these buildings stand as a way of saying you can't erase history. If you raise the buildings and burn them to the ground, or remove them, it creates a space for denialism. Show me where. And I think this space gives me great unease, like I find it hard sometimes to catch my breath
28:00 - 28:30 down here but having said that, people need to feel that and you don't feel that when you're roaming through a book, you don't find that when you go through a museum and you see a display. You feel that when you come down here and you look in this room and you imagine row on row of kids. You imagine a bowl of mush. And you imagine that potentially there could be maggots in it, because it's been sitting. You sit here and you imagine little girls who've
28:30 - 29:00 been sexually abused, little boys who've been sexually abused and you think that this is a school and the people who were doing that were the people who are running this school. And this wasn't a school, this wasn't. This was a space where they broke and tore children from culture, identity. They tore children from family and community and they tore children away from belonging and history, like their history, their people. The first residential schools were 1867
29:00 - 29:30 lasted over a 100 years to 1996, it's when the last school closed. What was the purpose of these schools in the beginning? Well the way it was described in the documents that you can research, was that it was to deal with the so-called Indian problem. In the early days the relationship was
29:30 - 30:00 quite a positive one with the colonizers. But as time went on and more and more settlers came, the Indians were getting in the way. They were protesting. They were resisting, so instead of being allies and teachers and helpmates to the fur trade, they became a problem. So then people started to talk about how do we deal with this problem. There was one famous Oxford Professor who was in charge of the colonial state and he suggested. well you could exterminate them. You could contain
30:00 - 30:30 them. You can assimilate them. There's different strategies you could use and he presented that to the government. One of them was also slavery. You could enslave them and the, so the government started to study this thing and there was another guy called Bagot. He went down to the US, he was looking at the industrial schools there. He came back to Canada and he suggested, well what would
30:30 - 31:00 work, he thought, was residential schools so you could break the bond between the child and the parent, the child in the community. Don't allow them to speak their languages or do anything to do with this, the savagery of their culture and he suggested that. And then there was another guy called Nicholas Davin. He came along and he said well how are we going to do this? The best way probably would get the church to run them because the churches were all competing
31:00 - 31:30 with one another anyway to convert the native people to Christianity. And the Catholic Church had the biggest presence and they had the biggest influence, the biggest lobby for the government. So they in fact ended up running about 70% of the schools but a variety of churches were entered into contracts with the federal government to run these schools. And the more students a school had, the more money. Yes, it was based on per capita funding. So the more students you had, the more
31:30 - 32:00 money you got so that incentivized the churches to go out and get as many children as they could. And they employed the services of the RCMP, they employed the services of the Indian agent and others to gather as many children as they could to bring to the school and that would ensure that they were they were funded. However the funding was so miserable, it was $180 per child per year in the '30s and you know you hear people say "oh those schools were designed to help the
32:00 - 32:30 native population to compete and to participate in Canadian Society." Not true, and the funding tells you the story because $180 per child per year compared to any other institutional setting the school for the deaf or reformed schools for non-indigenous children or prisons, were at least three times that amount. So the funding was terribly inadequate by any comparator. And then
32:30 - 33:00 the regulations were were so interesting because provincial schools run by provincial governments for non-indigenous children were governed by provincial legislation and if you look at that legislation, there would be approximately 90 pages of regulations. The Manitoba Act in particular, I looked at 91 pages of regulations. You look at the Indian Act and what regulations were there for industrial schools for 102 or 103 years, there was approximately four pages
33:00 - 33:30 of regulations. And, of course, these regulations deal with discipline, qualifications for teachers, curriculum the school year expectations, building requirements codes, etc. None of that applied to these Indian residential schools. So if you look at the regs, and you look at the money, it tells the story. These schools were not for education, they were for containment for assimilation, basically. Otherwise, had the motive been to educate these children, they would have treated them the same
33:30 - 34:00 as other schools, so that they could come out the other end being reading and writing and educated so they could compete in the society and obtain jobs and participate. But that wasn't the purpose and people may not realize that there was no choice. For children it was mandatory on reserves for children to go to these schools. The church lobbied for legisation for this per capita reason to get as many kids in as possible so in the '20s then, the government passed legislation
34:00 - 34:30 through the Indian Act that required the children to go to school from Age 4 to 16. And what was interesting if if they, if it wasn't enforced when parents signed the application form, they essentially handed over control of their child so if the kid wanted to leave or ran away it was the school that controlled that child so the child would be forced back into the school till they
34:30 - 35:00 were 16 uh my name is Delia Opekokew. I'm Cree from the cCnoe Lake Indian reserve in Saskatchewan and I have practiced law in and out of Toronto with clients across the country regarding the effects of Assimilation. There was an effort from the government historically
35:00 - 35:30 to attempt to uh assimilate Indigenous people to become similar to the settlers. And was a lot of damage because of that and one of the ways they did that was through the Indian residential schools where people like myself were put into residential schools with the view to losing our languages and to only speak in English and to lose our
35:30 - 36:00 culture and customs and to adopt the ways of which historically they use the term "the ways of the white man" and that occurred extensively in the the later part of the 19th century all through the 20th century but by the mid of the middle part of the 20th century, Indigenous people
36:00 - 36:30 started to fight against that. They wanted to continue their own customs, their own ways and to keep their languages. The bureaucrats and some of the church officials believe that it was the only way to deal with Indigenous people, which was to separate them from their families from their culture the customs and build these schools. And they build schools across the country where
36:30 - 37:00 we were removed from our families and put into these residential schools and they continued from the 19th century right until about 1996 which is really not too long ago. That impact is horrendous for some people. I was a deputy chief adjudicator of the independent assessment process which was created as a tribunal under the class action lawsuit settlement that certain
37:00 - 37:30 Indian Residential School survivors had pursued. And the, out of the about five categories in the settlement agreement, one of them was the creation of this tribunal, and we heard this and the tribunal allowed for individuals to pursue claims of physical, sexual and other wrongs that were made
37:30 - 38:00 against them. And there was just so many claims pursued. There were horrendous acts of sexual abuse, sexual and physical abuse against people while they were in school. And a clarification here, when I entered residential school I wasn't forced, it was a decision taken by my mother and father that we would enter the residential school. Had they gone to residential school? My mom
38:00 - 38:30 and dad both went to the school. The same school, same school. I mean, I would never know, how, what their experiences were like. I know three incidents were of abuse, physical by priests my aunt, my mom's younger sister was stripped by the priest and whipped in front of the the girl
38:30 - 39:00 or peer group. And actually whipped and so I asked an older woman on the reserve, she she had been, she was present there and I said what, what did you do? What did the girls do? Nothing she says, couldn't do nothing. We cried to when they witnessed this and well why did the priest do that? She says we
39:00 - 39:30 don't know maybe, because she was pretty, a pretty young woman. My mom's younger sister and yeah. And then another time, my father late father and his two friends were caught stealing candy from the from the priest, and you know each of them put their hand in this little hole. I think that
39:30 - 40:00 they, they tell me guys that knew about this that it was designed that way so that kids would get, boys would get caught and the three of them, Pete and my dad JB and Alec were caught. They were whipped, right, but strapped actually. Major strapped by this priest and this is Kathleen where I want you to give people some perspective on when it became a movement to fight back.
40:00 - 40:30 To actually hold someone accountable for the experiences of over 150,000 children. Well what what happened with fairly recent history as you probably know after the famous interview with Barbara Frum, Phil told the story of his school. A lot of people started to react because this was well known within the Indigenous community but certainly not in the non-Indigenous community.
40:30 - 41:00 And so people started going talking to their lawyers and a whole lot of cases started to be filed in the courts to the extent that eventually there was thousands, it was over up to 15,000 cases, class actions as well as individual lawsuits and the Chief Justice who was in charge of managing the residential school claims said that this will take 56 years of court
41:00 - 41:30 time to resolve all these cases and nothing else will be able to be heard so it was a crisis in the courts. So he said something has to be done and then that's when it was diverted over to a talk of a settlement or an alternate dispute resolution type of process and that was in the early 2000s in about 2003. And out line your role first of all in that significant part of Canadian history.
41:30 - 42:00 Right, well I had been involved with a another case involving indigenous women who were denied equal pay for doing the same work as non-indigenous women outside reserve, and so I was asked to look at what an alternative dispute resolution would look like and what could be done. And that the AFN asked me to to do that. So I got involved in the early stages and Canada produced
42:00 - 42:30 an alternative dispute resolution, process, yeah that everybody would, so in other words, it was they laid it on it was without Consultation which was sort of pro forma for the government. People rejected it. The poster girl for how terrible it was was this lovely Elder woman who had, when she was at a reserve school, her mother had died and they wouldn't let her
42:30 - 43:00 go to the funeral so she ran away to go to the funeral and when she got back, she was severely punished. And so she took an action under this ADR process and they said no sorry it's not covered and so she appealed it make a long story short, the government spent over $26,000 to deny her a claim that would have been worth $2,500, so it became very obvious not only to those of
43:00 - 43:30 us working on this but to the government itself that this there's something fundamentally wrong. So what happened then was the AFN and the University of Calgary law faculty worked together to do a conference and we invited experts from all over the world and Phil you were the Grand Chief at that time? He was the National Chief of Canada and we co-chaired that conference and we asked one question we said will this ADR result in reconciliation because that was the government stated objective so we had medical people, we had judges, lawyers, survivors,
43:30 - 44:00 Elders, Native studies experts, psychiatrists, the whole range. Catholic bishop, Mother Superior. Yeah. It was a very diverse group and even government civil servants and the man that was in charge of the residential school file, everybody said no it won't it's terribly deficient. So then at the last day of the conference, Mario Dionne, who was the head of the residential school
44:00 - 44:30 file civil Servant, said to Phil, okay you do it and he provided sufficient funding. Phil said okay let's do it and and asked me to head up the project which I did and we took a lot of those experts and people and worked over several months. We went over to Ireland to see what they were doing, we wrote up an Irish report, we wrote up the AFN report we said this is what has to be done. Truth commission, healing funds commemoration for the elderly, an apology loss of language and
44:30 - 45:00 culture to be acknowledged and of course the abuse claims for individual students and there has to be an archive and a research center that kind of thing was in the AFN report so much further than mainstream law. Yes because all the government wanted to do was what British law says, that you can get money if somebody hurts you and how do you measure that? You go to to the marketplace and see if there's a replacement value for what you've lost but the problem is when you've lost
45:00 - 45:30 a childhood when you've lost your culture when you've lost your language when you've lost your dignity when you've you know been treated as as Phil has described there's nothing in the marketplace that you can compare that to and and what we also heard from survivors on or coast to coast to coast consultation period of time we took was that they wanted to tell their story and be heard, number one. Two they wanted to heal, three they wanted to commemorate those that had passed,
45:30 - 46:00 four they wanted to be treated with dignity and equality - they didn't even talk about compensation. We said yeah but what about compensation but that was all that the mainstream legal system could provide actually under British common law so what was needed then was an Indigenous approach and a transformative approach which the National Chief insisted upon so that was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission changed everything. Really was the and that was we knew would be the
46:00 - 46:30 legacy piece because money comes and goes there, the other elements were very important you know to have ceremony, etc. And in individual communities and nationally but we knew the Legacy would be the truth commission and what would follow from that and indeed that. I think is we can safely say is what has happened and would what would you say they changed as a result of that for Indigenous
46:30 - 47:00 peoples to to be heard that way our stories and some of them were horrific, unpleasant to people that had no idea about residential schools and and what residential schools were about and there was disbelief that this actually happened. And so we knew and understood that what
47:00 - 47:30 we were going to have to do was to go out and in effect spread the word inform and educate. Canadians about the residential school experience in such a way that it would compel Canadians to accept what we were saying as the truth and it was, it was a very difficult undertaking.
47:30 - 48:00 There were certainly references during that time of the unmarked graves the suspected unmarked graves the thousands of children then as we've said it was Kamloops that really brought that and was a turning point became a turning point for the country to wake up to this and explain the reality.
48:00 - 48:30 In the years that have unfolded since the Kamloops announcement of the 215. The ground penetrating work that's happening to to determine actual numbers put that in perspective for us. Well the point you make about Kamloops and the on 215 unmarked graves is true that became
48:30 - 49:00 a turning point in our in the conversation or conversations we were having with Canadians about the residential school experience. And that we were being truthful we were being open and honest about these stories but that's a small piece of this larger story if I'm talking to somebody about
49:00 - 49:30 unmarked burials, I always start from the context of there's a part of Canada's history that has been hid for a very long time and people like to understand and believe that Canada is a wonderful place and it's perfect place and the best place in the world to live and I'm not saying I challenge that. I don't I love the country I live in. I love the fact that I'm in a country where I can come to work every day and challenge the facts and I'm not you know, I'm not threatened with my
49:30 - 50:00 life so I want to start there this isn't about you have to love Canada or hate Canada. It's that you have to understand the tension of what it is to live in Canada and then I will say some of the history includes the Indian residential school system so then they started taking children and then they started strengthening the legislation but the problem in part of this is the systems and the schools were underfunded a lot of the people that were brought in were brought in with religious beliefs and faith-based beliefs and cultural beliefs that were savages that we were
50:00 - 50:30 uneducated we needed to be converted to God and because we were seen in this frame we were less than human and it opened the door for violence. And that violence became violence that could have started simply by cutting braids when kids walked in the school, stripping them of clothing that they were used to. And the European clothing. Then it could be the stripping of self-worth by being
50:30 - 51:00 very aggressive and very verbally abusive and then further tearing down through physical and sexual abuse and then sometimes it goes too far and children died and sometimes things happened from abuse and young girls got pregnant babies were born and you can't have that coming out so more children died and then you overpack schools because there wasn't enough money to run the schools and influenza happened and thousands of children died and then you started feeding children contaminated
51:00 - 51:30 meats with tuberculosis and other diseases. More children died unmarked burials is a two-edged sword. We can look for the anomalies in the ground and we can look for records and documents the anomalies in the ground will tell us who died and we can work to bring them home. The records and documents tell us how they died they tell us when they came into the program the school they
51:30 - 52:00 tell us what happened to them while they were at the school in some cases and then nothing so we're then able to start connect, making the connections you need to connect to understand who really died here but I think in talking to people in Canada, there's a lot of denialism so there's a lot of people that says we're not telling the truth. We have bad memories they're old they don't remember correctly. The fact is people do remember correctly and there are records that show that they remember
52:00 - 52:30 correctly the problem is that because this history hasn't been told in this country people can't begin to wrap their head around what it that this country could do something like that. That the church that is the source of their foundation and their hope could be part of something so henious that it would involve the death of children the abuse of children and unmarked
52:30 - 53:00 burials of children and so it's easier to deny it than to do the work and I often think of it as grief, a lot of people struggle when they, when they're managing grief that they can't deal with it so they just pretend things don't happen and I think, when I think of non-Indigenous people denying that the schools and the history existed, I think it's the grief of having to let go of a belief system that holds the value of this country so high that it can't be challenged and I think
53:00 - 53:30 learning how to walk through and work through that grief we get to the other side of it happened. How do we make sure it never happens again. Kamloopsmwasn't breaking news as they say no this had been known since 1907 actually when a fellow called Dr. Peter Bryce he was the medical officer for the federal government in charge of looking at the health and well-being of Indigenous children
53:30 - 54:00 in residential school 1907, sort of the first whistleblower that's right and he he saw these appalling conditions tuberculosis was raging through the country but it was particularly egregious in Indian residential schools he wrote in his report that 25% overall of kids were dying in residential schools 25% of the enrollment were dying and he said in some situation 69% of the entire the entire student population of the school had perished. Yeah yeah and so
54:00 - 54:30 he wrote this up and he submitted it to Duncan Campbell Scott, the guy we talked about earlier and Campbell Scott deep sixed the report. Refused to publish it and he said we will carry on in this per capita funding model which incentivized the church to bring in even more kids that were sick into the schools which spread the tuberculosis even worse and don't forget the environment in
54:30 - 55:00 these schools was poor food, poor ventilation, overcrowding and children who were already in a precarious emotional and psychological state so this is the environment so Dr Bryce blew the whistle and when the government failed to publish his report, and they actually fired him he then wrote a book about this so so I mean Kamloops all that the Kamloops revelation was was
55:00 - 55:30 these bodies are out there and they're buried around residential schools and in fact in our school we've identified these anomalies which we think are the graves of children because where else they go the other thing that's importantly say is the budget was so meager for these schools, $180 per child per year, is that they didn't have the funds to send the bodies of the children home either, even if they wanted to so these children were buried there and then the fact of them being
55:30 - 56:00 unmarked demonstrates you know the lack of of course, care, and concern and the dignity of the the lives of these children, so they were largely of the thousands we don't really know an actual number obviously but the disease as you describe it was so rampant that so many of these kids were dying and probably just for speed and disrespect well the TRC established registries. They were able to actually discover over 2,000 deaths that were registered cause of death the child's name where
56:00 - 56:30 they were from over 2,000 then there was the unnamed registry where children the the school would just report well we had six children die or two children died or whatever and that without names and in that registry there's well over a thousand names and then there was the children that were sent home, and Dr. Bryce said of the children that were sent home 69% of them died
56:30 - 57:00 at home or they were sent to some other facility so you know the numbers could be very high whether they were buried or not around residential schools. We don't know but we certainly know the numbers in residential schools is probably close in this in the TRC estimated about 6,000 but probably over 2,600 that are actually registered and then there's these unregistered deaths the school that my grandmother they attended in St. Boniface, the St. Boniface industrial school that was modelled on the
57:00 - 57:30 industrial schools in the United States so the federal official that was sent to study the US model that was Davin. Nicholas Davin, he came back and and was praised in industrial school model so that's when industrials came to be and my, the one my grandmother attended in
57:30 - 58:00 St. Boniface, their student lists are really well documented names, age, where they were from, if they died, the cause of death and the communities they were from, they have all of the names on this school registry and every child that died in the school was buried at the St Boniface
58:00 - 58:30 Cathedral Cemetery, there are two cemeteries newer one on Archibald, the older one in front of the former Basilica there and they were buried in amongst the community people that were buried there right so according to their records there are about 6,000 people that were buried in that
58:30 - 59:00 in that grave, just there, grave yeah and all of the kids that died at the industrial school were buried there so those graves became unmarked graves just like my great-grandfather's grave there. He wasn't a student but he died at the St. Boniface Hospital in 1902 he's buried there we don't know where but I found his brother and his nephew buried at the more recent the newer grave there
59:00 - 59:30 seems I mean we could literally do six full episodes just on this subject but there's a perception that Metis and Inuit children were not dragged into the residential school system and yet they very much were can you put them in the picture the reality for children from Métis communities well there was Métis children in Indian residential schools um not as many as the status Indian children because they were designed for status Indian children but
59:30 - 60:00 if Métis children were in the area or their parents sent them there they were registered often their names actually didn't appear on the registry because the government didn't fund Métis children. Inuit children went to Mission schools in the north and they were definitely funded by the federal government and they were residential schools and they were under the settlement agreement and the Métis well even white children that went to residential schools were
60:00 - 60:30 covered by the settlement agreement that would surprise people to know that white children were at these schools we had we had claimants that were white, well maybe their parents worked at the school and lived on the school grounds or lived in the reserve or nearby and sent their or had their children there and their children were able to claim compensation under the settlement agreement for the common experience payment as well as if they were abused they
60:30 - 61:00 could claim that. It's not about money but in real terms what what did the settlement look like for each person or who'd gone to a residential school. Well first of all as a lawyer I'd say sure it's about money, that's the way the legal system account has people account for what they do wrong if somebody rashes in your car or beats you up or whatever you're entitled to have that person
61:00 - 61:30 called to account and the way that we do that in our system is we we measure that in money so and it's important because it hurts, it hurts at least theoretically the person who's done the harm so money is not unimportant but the point that that we were making and the point that was so important in the settlement agreement was that it's much more than that it was about it, was about like I said the telling of the story the healing that was required the dignity restoration
61:30 - 62:00 that was needed the equality that was required in order for people to come away from this with a sense that it was worthwhile that they could feel that somehow that they had brought accountability to their lives part of that, part of that was the need for an apology, sure from the church absolutely, so Phil tell me when did the Catholic Church basically first acknowledge
62:00 - 62:30 the reality of what it had what had unfolded in those schools? Ir we do it in the context of the orders that ran these schools and who was the first? It was the Oblate Order in 1991. They issued an apology and the Oates ran the largest percentage of the residential schools in
62:30 - 63:00 Canada and they acknowledged the wrongs and the harms that they inflicted on people and but refused to give over documents that would have helped in some of these cases they did in in large measure with whole documents I don't know if it was if it was done deliberately or they didn't
63:00 - 63:30 have the resources themselves to to know what to do with the documents they had. For example when I was in Ottawa, I used to spend a fair bit of time even as National Chief at the national archives for the all blade order and they would show me fascinating artifacts magazines books I mean the the the Oblates or Oblates were proficient as they went about their business of
63:30 - 64:00 evangelization. They learned the languages, the Indigenous languages they wrote. These languages they compose hymn books and prayer books in Indigenous languages, languages that I think it's important to say you were not allowed to speak inside the walls of those schools we were
64:00 - 64:30 discouraged for sure were we ever punished severely for speaking our language I'm not aware of that in my in our school interestingly enough in other schools I just want to say I've, I've spoken to people who had pins put in their tongues if they spoke their their own language. What about culpability of the church so in terms of language in our school it was essentially a
64:30 - 65:00 language school for the missionaries there were two priests that were incredibly proficient in speaking the Ojibwe language and so they brought other missionaries, priests and brothers come and learn your Ojibwe language right at our school. There are pictures of these priests that that were there studying the language and many of them would then go out after they had become
65:00 - 65:30 proficient in the language to go out and recruit, well spread the word and they would preach on Sundays in Ojibwe and they were very good, it's a fascinating, almost a PR campaign if you will to win over the people that clearly the church wanted to
65:30 - 66:00 well they were in control convert they were in control in the community what about as far as compensation from the church during this process. Kathleen well you see the Catholic Church the way it organizes itself made it very very difficult from liability perspective because a lot of people as you probably recall were saying well the Vatican is so wealthy they should be able to pay a lot of money way more money than the survivors are getting but the reality from a
66:00 - 66:30 legal perspective, was that the corporate structure of the church is such that all these individual dases are individual legal actors on their own they're not connected to the Vatican in terms of responsibility for the wrongdoings that may happen in this diocese or that diocese and then some diocese are wealthy. Like let's say the diocese of Calgary or Toronto Vancouver but then you've got diocese out in
66:30 - 67:00 the rural areas that that basically are very poor and um so some of these many residential schools were located in remote areas in diocese that would survive basically on shoestring. So argued that we don't have the money to pay you can't, you you sue us it'll be like uh suing an empty purse. You know there are over 70 separate legal entities representing the Catholics in Canada and
67:00 - 67:30 and this also fed into the Vatican not making a global apology because they said well we're not responsible for all of these diocese which I mean in from a strict legal perspective one could see the argument but in fact for ordinary people and the survivors they saw what they were doing and they saw the power exerted over them coming from the Catholic Church large and we knew about Pope John
67:30 - 68:00 Paul II's apology in the south in Ireland. Pope Francis the apology in what country in South America? In Ecuador so we knew that the Catholic church had apologize to Indigenous peoples and the Irish, and they were telling us in effect that it was impossible to do it, do it
68:00 - 68:30 here. When we went to Ireland too, it was, it was explained to us that there was this schism in the Catholic Church, there's a conservative wing and there's the more liberal wing, and that the conservative wing just said just forget it, we deny everything people will die the church will carry on the progressive side we're saying if we don't come to grips with this and deal with the reparations and the apology, the Catholic Church will die and nobody will come to church. Which in
68:30 - 69:00 fact has been happening all over the world, so there was these two factions within the church itself and then I think Pope Benedict it would be safe to say was on the conservative side, although we met with him and he did express an apology of sorts and then Pope Francis was elected to be more on the progressive side and he was more amenable it seems to the suggestion that the church had
69:00 - 69:30 to come to grips with this and that that was a monumental if we can go to 2022 where you were both in in at Vatican City along with a group of of Indigenous leaders to make that appeal to the Pope in person to to as recently as that to get an apology um leading to him coming to Canada and finally doing that what did that mean to you. Phil well you describe it as monumental it was
69:30 - 70:00 once in a lifetime moment and that apology is the first and only time we will hear the Pope apologize to Indigenous peoples from Canada. So it was a very special moment and particularly those that have remained devout Catholics it was like and there was a
70:00 - 70:30 a good number of them present in in St. Peters's that exalted the moment. Others less inclined, saw it as a beginning a beginning of a renewal in the relationship between the Catholic church and Indigenous Catholics as that happened in a way
70:30 - 71:00 that's visible. I haven't seen evidence of that myself, i mean we're still having priests involved in very serious crimes. I mean you had four churches built by the people, community
71:00 - 71:30 people that were burnt to the ground during the Kamloops and yet still I mean if we just coming back to Kamloops and during the whole year of the Vatican and the Pope coming here there are still those who refuse to accept. Kathleen, those who who really choose to diminish and
71:30 - 72:00 not believe essentially the fact that there are children in unmarked graves because no bones have, if you will, been emerged right. Well you know, there's always been deniers. Why do they deny? Well I think it's about creating a doubt about the guilt of the people who have done these atrocities so that you know they are found to be innocent in their minds. it's about self-serving, self-interest
72:00 - 72:30 in the sense that the wealth that's been accumulated over the centuries to make Canada one of the wealthiest countries in the world that's been done on the backs of Indigenous peoples. If you deny that well then you're self- serve you're you're serving yourself in terms of justifying the privilege that white colonists have in Canada. There's no doubt that privilege exists to this day
72:30 - 73:00 but the thing about it is it's very serious it's dangerous because if you go back in the history it was all about denial you know in 1850 Chiefs were saying to the church and to the government these schools aren't good. You know 1907 Dr. Bryce was saying children are dying in huge numbers and there was denial, right Duncan Campbell Scott said well let's keep going. Tthey buried the report
73:00 - 73:30 so the denialists have existed now for hundreds of years to say that there was nothing wrong with what they were doing to the Indigenous peoples and that denialism has allowed it to continue, you see. And if we believe in never again which was the whole purpose of the apology of Steven Harper and Pope Francis and even Pope Benedict for sure denialists are opening the door for
73:30 - 74:00 it to happen again because if they can convince people it never happened well you can continue on with this discrimination and subordination and marginalization and we see this with the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. I mean, what happened there? Well the discussion was diverted to, was it genocide or wasn't? They never come to grips with the actual happenings to these to the women and girls in Canada, you know. So denialism is very very dangerous and his history proves. That so
74:00 - 74:30 these folks that are denying without examining the evidence are not, they're doing a great disservice not only to the Indigenous people but to our country, and to our history and to making sure that these atrocities will never happen again you have to accept your history and deal with it. I mean we've been through somewhat of an existential crisis in Canada wondering who are we we've been taught that we're these wonderful human rights respecting citizens of a country that leads
74:30 - 75:00 the world. But in fact when they were, were confronted with these atrocities of our history the the the solution is not to deny the solution is to say yes we did it and here's what we're trying to do to make sure it never happens again and to account for those things so these denialists are not not acting in the best interest either of themselves or their country or certainly
75:00 - 75:30 the indigenous people who deserve better who deserve to be acknowledged and to be accounted for. I don't have any respect for the people who are are engaged in this process whether they pick on the graves or whether they pick on the stories or whether they pick on, you know documents that they have found, or pick on somebody that says I had a positive experience. 150 thousand children went to those schools of course if you search hard enough you'll find somebody that says, sure I learned how
75:30 - 76:00 to play hockey or I learned to read and write or you have to look at the whole picture in the context of what we've been talking about you know the the terrible lies that were told, the disrespect the breaching of the treaties, that all of those things and the residential schools right in the middle of all of that you have to appreciate that that context. Denying almost is like the last step in, another step in sure it's another step towards cultural genocide continuing the
76:00 - 76:30 way they have been so if you're contented with that, yeah that shows what kind of a person you are, I suppose, you know. Going back to the apology at the Vatican by Pope Francis and then his visit to Canada starting at the Mascwacis and Commonweath Stadium and Lac Saint Anne, and Quebec City and then Nunavut,
76:30 - 77:00 the event, the moment, the private and general audience in St. Peters was extraordinary. It was I mean it was emotional it was an emotional time moment for many, and we were witness to a moment that we couldn't imagine ever taking place the way it did right where we had our people,
77:00 - 77:30 in our Elder, for example praying to the pope and his Cardinals with his pipe and bestowing a name on the pope, kissing the forehead and and then each of us that were there, official delegates, being invited to speak a few words to the Holy Father and then in the general audience to have
77:30 - 78:00 um Métis fiddlers and then First Nations dancer was just absolutely marvelous. Man it was moving and then the Inuit singing to the Pope in their language and one of the Bishops joining them who knew the language also singing and and then you had the Pope there in front of us and
78:00 - 78:30 he had he had promised an apology right we had the document and uh we looked for the words. I am sorry and they were there, very sorry then he said I'm going to visit. I'm going to come to visit you. I'm going to go on your homeland and I will expand on this apology. I will have more to say
78:30 - 79:00 the apology and and of course he followed true on that right and I think there was a very deep appreciation that this was a moment in time that we had waited and pushed for for such a long time and we never thought it would be possible, especially after we'd been to see Benedict the 16th and he expressed regrets for the abuses and that had that had been inflicted on our peoplet.
79:00 - 79:30 The harms that they experienced we didn't impose our anger on the on Benedict the 16th we were we were very guarded and cautious about what we said and Francis on the other hand it was just a huge celebration in effect, right, a celebration for the moment in the end there was an
79:30 - 80:00 incredible pilgrimage of people from Manitoba from across this country um and after all of the pain inflicted over over a hundred years it felt like a necessary step in reconciliation. On that road the burden had been lifted the burden had been lifted from the shoulders of
80:00 - 80:30 thousands of our people. The Pope was there and said I believe you, I believe your stories and you didn't have to suffer needlessly suffer so we are very sorry for what the church has done to you, right. We are very sorry even though he himself apparently couldn't speak for all the church, right, given the legal configuration in Canada and elsewhere but
80:30 - 81:00 he but he's recognized as the leader of the world in terms of the Catholic faith, I think that sounds like a perfect place to end this part of our conversation we could clearly go on there's just so much to apologize for, so many layers to the '60s scoop missing and murdered so many things we will discuss as our conversations continue but certainly the assimilation policies there was institutionalized and there was push back and the fight then for
81:00 - 81:30 indigenous people and self-determination which is where we will go in our next conversation. [Music]
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