‘Overwhelming’: Survivors reflect on pope’s Indigenous abuse apology

MASKWACIS, AB – JULY 25: People react as Pope Francis issues an apology for the treatment of First Nations in Canada’s Residential School system his visit to Maskwacis, Canada on July 25, 2022. The Pope is touring Canada, meeting with Indigenous communities and community leaders in an effort to reconcile the harmful legacy of the church’s role in Canada’s residential schools. Cole Burston/Getty Images/AFP (Photo by Cole Burston / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

 

MASKWACIS, Canada (AFP) — Some seemed far away, others wept or applauded: a great wave of emotion swept through the crowd on Monday in western Canada’s Maskwacis when the pope himself begged forgiveness for the “evil” done to Indigenous people.

One way or another, they had all been affected by the decades of abuse against children in schools run by the Catholic Church, part of a system seeking to stamp out the Indigenous identity of tens of thousands of people.

Most of them had been hoping for this for a long time. “I waited 50 years for this apology,” said one former student, Evelyn Korkmaz. “And finally today I heard it.”

“I am sorry,” the 85-year-old pontiff told the crowd, many wearing traditional clothing. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”

He evoked the “physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse” of children over the course of decades.

Shortly after his speech, one of the chiefs gave him a traditional headdress — then suddenly a woman stood up to sing the Canadian anthem alone in Cree. A tear rolled down her weathered face.

“Words cannot describe how important today is for the healing journey,” said Vernon Saddleback, one of the chiefs of the Maskwacis reservation, where the pope made his first stop on a tour of Canada dedicated to its First Nations, Metis and Inuit people.

Shortly before, a long red banner had woven through the crowd as they waited for the pope’s arrival.

On the scarlet fabric: 4,120 children’s names written in white.

MASKWACIS, AB – JULY 25: A red ribbon bearing the names of children that passed away in Canada’s residential school system snakes through the crowd at the Ermineskin Pow Wow Arbour during Pope Francis’ visit to Maskwacis, Canada on July 25, 2022. The Pope is touring Canada, meeting with Indigenous communities and community leaders in an effort to reconcile the harmful legacy of the church’s role in Canada’s residential schools. Cole Burston/Getty Images/AFP (Photo by Cole Burston / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

These are just some of the thousands of children who died after they were forced to attend the schools, and who were often buried nearby in unmarked graves and without their parents having been informed.

Many died of diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, or by accident, but also because of abuse and neglect, and poor sanitary conditions.

The system is believed to have caused at least 6,000 deaths between the end of the 19th century and the 1990s and traumatized several generations.

This handout picture taken and released on July 25, 2022 by the Vatican press office shows Pope Francis visiting the Ermineskin Cree Nation Cemetery in Maskwacis, south of Edmonton, western Canada. – Pope Francis visits Canada for a chance to personally apologise to Indigenous survivors of abuse committed over a span of decades at residential schools run by the Catholic Church. (Photo by Handout / VATICAN MEDIA / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / Vatican press office” – NO MARKETING – NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

– ‘751’ –
Irene Liening, from Muskowekwan, who spent eight years in a residential school and who came to Maskwacis with her children from the neighboring province of British Columbia, hoped that survivors and their families can “find peace and healing.”

She gave vivid illustration of the intergenerational trauma that such abuse can inflict.

A monument honoring survivors of the Ermineskin Indian Residential School is seen near the site where the school stood, on Ermineskin 138 reserve in Maskwacis, Alberta, June 7, 2022. – For decades, trauma has lingered in the tiny Indigenous Canadian community of Maskwacis. But some hope to finally find a degree of closure during a visit by Pope Francis to apologize for the Church’s role in a century of abuse.
The pontiff will stop in the community of 19,000 people some 62 miles (100 kilometers) north of Edmonton, Alberta, on July 25, to visit the site of one of the state boarding schools run by churches where Indigenous children were once forcibly sequestered. (Photo by Cole Burston / AFP)

Beginning a story about her aunt, who died aged five or six in one of the schools, she stopped, admitting it was too painful.

But later she returned to the topic, describing how her aunt was killed after being thrown down the stairs by a nun. Her name was on the red banner, she said.

Her own children, whom she brought to the ceremony, had also suffered “because of what I put them through, you know, coming out of a residential school feeling so… like I’m not even a person.”

As a small child in the school, she admitted, she had not even known her own name. “I was known as number 751.”

In the end, many confessed to feeling disoriented by the day’s emotions.

Korkmaz spent four years in a residential school.

The day had been “overwhelming,” she said. “It’s been a very emotional day for me as a survivor. I had my ups and downs.”

She added that she was “glad I lived long enough to have witnessed his apology.”

Many of her relatives, friends, classmates and members of her community did not — they had died by suicide or addiction, fallouts from the abuse, she said.

Eric Large, former Saddle Lake First Nation chief and Blue Quills Indian Residential School survivor, points to where unmarked graves have been found in Saddle Lake Cemetery on Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, Canada, on June 8, 2022. – Pope Francis’s upcoming visit to Canada where he is expected to offer an apology to Indigenous peoples for more than a century of abuses at state schools run by the church has provoked excitement, but also unease among natives. (Photo by Cole Burston / AFP)
Autumn Peters places 215 ribbons on the fence behind the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in honor of the 215 children whose remains have been discovered buried near the facility, as well as her grandfather Clayton Peter, a survivor of the school, and all other survivors, in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, on June 2, 2021. (Photo by Cole BURSTON / AFP)

Now she wants the Church to provide access to the school records — documents which could finally present an official account of what happened to those children whose fates remain unknown.

“They belong here in Canada. They belong to us. This is our history. They don’t belong in Rome. They belong here,” she said.

 

© Agence France-Presse