When father doesn’t know best

I’m a father. My children are 12 and 9.

I don’t know what it’s like to have my kids taken from me.

I don't know what it’s like to have them removed from our home and sent to a place where they were forbidden to speak their language or practice their culture. A place where they normalized nightmarish emotional and physical abuse, bullying, deprivation, and death.

I don’t know what it’s like to be abandoned and betrayed by the government.

And I don’t know or understand the true history of our country.

What I now know is that for more than a century, 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit kids were subjected to residential schools where the prime directive was assimilation.

I now know that we have a responsibility to seek out, understand and acknowledge the truth. And that everyone in Canada can contribute to reconciliation.

And I know that on this Father’s Day (and every day), it’s not good enough to teach our kids what our fathers taught us.

It’s far more important we teach them the things they didn’t.

Please read.

Please listen.

Please give.

-Jeff Sage is a resident of London, Ontario.

We Feel a Largeness Coming On

About three years ago, Commissioner - the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, former senator and co-author of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report spoke to a packed crowd of us at King’s College Conference Centre in London, Ontario.

After a brief introduction to the talk on reconciliation, he invited all of us to take out our cell phones. I thought initially he was going to ask us to put them on mute. Not so. He asked us to scroll through and find a favorite picture of our child or niece, nephew, or grandchild. He did the same and landed on a picture of his 5-year-old granddaughter. It made him smile. There was a pause in the audience. “Now, he said, I want you to delete the picture.” As you can imagine, no one deleted anything. In a very poignant and stark way, we all got the point. This was the experience of so many indigenous parents whose children “were disappeared” in a variety of ways to the residential school system. Deleted.

None of us knew in that conference hall over three years ago that we would be reading in the newspaper in Canada on May 27, 2021, that 215 bodies of indigenous children were found buried in the yard of a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. Some were as young as three years old. Deleted.

In a conversation with friends the day after the revelation, one of the details that left us saddened and almost without words was the photo of a pair of small handcuffs created specifically for a child’s hands. While it was unspoken, the thought of intentionally handcuffing a small child somehow seemed to capture the cruelty and racism of this part of the Canadian story---past and present. Deleted.

Poet Tracy K. Smith reflects on the experience of racism this past year and a half, “We feel a largeness coming on.” Largeness is not ‘overwhelm’ - since overwhelm can hold us immobile.

During this year-and-a-half of the global pandemic; during this year-and-a-half of continued unmasking of systemic racism in the US and in Canada; during this year-and-a-half of ongoing angst about climate change, there is one question that rises to the surface.

As we carry grief and shock, what is the new story we will commit to creating personally and communally as a country?

Sister Margo Ritchie, Congregational Leader, csj

A Statement from the Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada

How are we connected to the Kamloops tragedy?

It is heart-wrenching to learn of the remains of 215 children found at the former Kamloops residential school.  Yes, the Truth and Reconciliation report told us about these missing children but to hear about a mass grave of children in Canada, and to know there are likely more such graves, as yet undiscovered, is deeply disturbing.

Given that this residential school was a Catholic-run institution, it is important to turn to the statements released by the Kamloops Bishop and the Vancouver Archbishop.  Bishop Nguyen of Kamloops joined his voice with others who are “heartbroken and horrified” and expressed his deepest sympathy to Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc.  He also offered assurance of personal support, prayers and accompaniment.”  The statement from Archbishop Miller wrote about the “ongoing need to bring to light every tragic situation that occurred in residential schools run by the Church.”

Such statements matter.  Still, the moment requires more. 

Steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, London, ON | May 31, 2021 (Photo: Mark Wright)

It is not enough to see this tragedy simply as an event from the past.  Catholics, in particular, are challenged to acknowledge how we, today, are connected to these deaths.  How have we internalized the colonial assumptions and attitudes that have shaped our social, cultural, economic, and political systems?  Where have racist assumptions become rooted in our subconscious?  What are we doing to decolonize our minds and hearts? 

“the moment requires more”

Here’s one action that might move us forward as a Church. 

We, the Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada, commit to urging the local bishops in the dioceses in which we live and work, to join with all Canadian bishops to request that Pope Francis visit Canada and offer a formal apology to the Indigenous peoples of this land, as has been requested by many Indigenous groups.  Will you join us?

Sister Sue Wilson, CSJ | Office for Systemic Justice | Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada

For more information, please read the press release from the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc.

Photos: Mark Wright