The Pope greets an indigenous leader. Photo credit: Vatican News.
I want to draw my readers’ attention to the extraordinary visit of Pope Francis to Canada to apologize personally for the destruction of thousands of Native children over the course of two centuries at boarding schools run by the government but staffed by Roman Catholic nuns, priests and brothers.
I seldom witness anyone taking personal responsibility for anything, even the smallest infraction such as running a red light. In this case, Pope Francis from his wheelchair is asking forgiveness for sexual, physical, spiritual and emotional abuse that has left several thousand Native children buried in unmarked graves. Their families often never knew why their children didn’t come home.
Punished with mouthwash containing lye for speaking their Native languages, beaten bloody for writing too slowly on the blackboard, held in cold, dirty dormitories and forced to eat substandard food, these children remain even today as permanent memorials to our country’s profound commitment to violence. Some survivors meeting the Pope wore orange shirts to commemorate a girl whose orange shirt, sewn and given to her by her grandmother, was confiscated when she was put into a uniform.
The Pope’s personal plea for forgiveness does shield the Roman Catholic Church itself from acknowledging culpability and perhaps being forced to pay reparations. This is because, in doctrine, The Church is the Body of Christ and so can never sin. Nevertheless, the photo of this venerable man of God visiting a Canadian graveyard where some of these children were buried is a powerful reminder that truth must always proceed reconciliation, perhaps the reason we so seldom reach reconciliation, mired in bitterness and denial.
Does this matter outside of the now-closed boarding school system in Canada and the US? Yes, because we are all members, willing or not, in the toxic system of patriarchy that produces, over and over, and in many different forms and many different countries, all kinds of suffering.
One of my British ancestors found an opportunity for work as overseer of a British-owned estate in the time of the Irish Famine. In his journal, he recounts his attempt to feed a few of the starving peasants, ruined by the failure of the potato crop that had become a monoculture under British rule. Doubtless he was, in many ways, a good man, but his goodness lacked the power to save these starving peasants, often driven to die by the road when the overseer decided to tear down their miserable huts.
We look for gleams of brightness everywhere, as we must, but sometimes it seems even the gleams only emphasize the darkness that at times surrounds us.
Here in New Mexico, a sacrifice state due to its lack of political clout and the fact that it is a minority-majority state, our land, water and air are to be further ruined by the gargantuan increase of plutonium pit production at Los Alamos; I see the white bulk of these factories in the mountains to the West whenever I drive. In the face of this power, our efforts as individuals may seem puny, yet we must go on, speaking the truth in the hope that one day we will reach reconciliation.
[For more on the Native American boarding schools here in New Mexico, please see my post “We Will Never Learn“]
Just thank you. We are all involved, like it or or.
The sins of the past are horrible and, yet, as noted, are barely acknowledged let alone apologized for. But even so, it is relatively safe to cast a glance backward and say, That should never have happened. But what about today? We have a massive failure of courage as regards the health of our nation. By some counts, in some areas, 30 percent of boys have an autism diagnosis and 54 percent of kids have a chronic disease. These are unheard of levels. Yet silence is golden or gold I should say. With news outlets getting as much as 70 percent of their revenues from Pharma, mums the word. Of course no one mentions that the US childhood vaccine schedule has tripled since manufacturers were granted freedom from liability in 1986.
It is perfectly acceptable to vilify anyone who has the gall to talk about the health and potential of a generation of present day kids being slaughtered.
Mums the word. Or sheer cowardice.