A partial apology

I am not indigenous. On both sides of my family I come from people who immigrated to the United States. I come from people who came from Europe. My people are not, however, recent immigrants. All of my grandparents on both sides of my family were born on this continent as were my parents and I. We’ve called this country home for many years.

I have, however, personally benefitted directly from the process of colonization and westward expansion of the United States. The first home that we owned is located on the historic land of the Shoshone and Bannock tribes. Neither tribes have relinquished title to that land. After a decade we sold that home and bought one ion the heart of Paha Sapa, land sacred to the Lakota people and other tribes. Our home was very near to the center of the territory ceded to the Great Sioux Nation. The land was illegally taken from the Lakota people when their reservation lands were downsized without their consent. The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the tribe and ordered the US Government to pay financial compensation to the tribe for the land seized. The tribe has steadfastly refused to accept money for their land and continues to maintain that justice can only be accomplished by the return of the land. After 25 years of living in that home it was sold. The home where we now live is on the traditional lands of the Lummi people, who call themselves Lhaq’temish. In addition, I am a trustee of a family trust that owns a small parcel of land in the heart of Crow country in Montana. Despite the fact that each of these parcels of land was obtained by my family through legal transactions of purchase from former owners, the fact that they are parcels of land to which title exists is the direct result of colonization. Further, the fact that our family has had money to purchase land comes, in part, from the historic process of homesteading, which granted free land to my ancestors - in all cases land that was taken from the people who had called that land home since time immemorial.

I do not pretend to be able to speak for indigenous people and I will wait until I have heard directly of their expressions, but as an outsider listening in to the ceremonial speech of Pope Francis yesterday on the grounds of a former residential school in Maskwacis, near Edmonton, Alberta, I heard only words that were similar to a papal statement that was previously made from the Vatican. Indeed the pope did issue a formal apology in a sense. He said “I am deeply sorry.” He expressed, “sorrow, indignation and shame” for the actions of Christians who operated the government-funded residential schools. He called the residential school system a “disastrous error” and asked for forgiveness.

I also noted what he did not say.

He did not confess that the majority of the residential schools in North America - nearly 70% of such schools in Canada - were run by the Roman Catholic Church. While he noted that the schools had been funded by the government of Canada and were part of official governmental policy, he did not acknowledge the role of the Roman Catholic Church in establishing that government. Most of all, he did not repudiate the Papal Bull “Inter Caetera,” issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493. As long as this document is not officially repudiated by the Pope, it remains official Roman Catholic Church doctrine. That Bull establishes what is known as the “Doctrine of Discovery.” It states that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be discovered, claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “barbarous nations” be overthrown and brought to the faith. This “Doctrine of Discovery” became the basis of all European claims in the Americas and the foundation of United States western expansion. In 1823, the United States Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall, held “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.”

The basis for removing indigenous people from their lands and seizing those lands for European settlers is directly based on an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. And though the Pope apologized for the horrible treatment of native children in residential schools including torture and death, he fell short of repudiating the official doctrine upon which the policies establishing those schools were based.

If I were indigenous, I would be tempted to respond to the Pope by saying, with all due respect, even though you have called this trip “a pilgrimage of penance,” you have failed to apologize for the actions of the church that led to the treatment of indigenous people as less than human. How can you expect those people to forgive you when you have not yet apologized for the official doctrines that allowed such colonization to occur in the first place?

The Vatican has a difficult time with apologies. I am afraid that many indigenous people will find this to be a less than complete apology for the actions of the church. In that they will be like Jewish people who are still waiting for a complete apology for the failings of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church during the horrors perpetrated by the Holocaust.

My reactions to the Papal visit, however, are not the important ones. Because so many indigenous chiefs as well as many First nations, Métis, and Inuit residential school survivors were present to hear the Pope’s remarks yesterday, I will wait and listen carefully to their responses. I remain hopeful that the apology and the pilgrimage of penance might be a first step on a journey of healing.

The 2015 report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the residential school system a central element of “cultural genocide” against indigenous peoples of Canada. More than 3,000 students are thought to have died in the schools. The pain and trauma of those schools remains with the survivors, their children, and grandchildren.

I will wait and listen carefully to what they have to say.

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