All this week a delegation of Indigenous representatives has been at the Vatican, sharing their stories of trauma with Pope Francis regarding the Residential Schools which were really institutions of indoctrination and genocide. The reports were that Francis listened with compassion although some Indigenous journalists felt that the narrative was being carefully managed.
Amidst the activities of the week was a visit to a collection of historical cultural objects which Indigenous leaders hope will be repatriated. While the Vatican maintains that most were gifts, we don't know the level of coercion involved in this supposed generosity.
Some Indigenous commentators have been vocal in opposing this visit and have expressed their disdain for the Roman Catholic church which has been responsible for so much pain.
Today, which is the final meeting with the delegation, Pope Francis offered the apology which was absent from earlier conversations. It is a summary of what was heard and what we can hope was made with genuine contrition. There was also a commitment to visit Indigenous communities this year probably around the time of the Feast of St. Anne, which is in July. It is signficant that Francis recognized the Indigenous connection to the land, "which you see not as a resource to be exploited, but as a gift of heaven."
I have included part of the apology in my Lion Lamb blog, but here the portion which acknowlegges that Indigenous spirituality is connected to the Creator, to Turtle Island, to the Creator:
In these days, a beautiful image kept coming up. You compared yourselves to the branches of a tree. Like those branches, you have spread in different directions, you have experienced various times and seasons, and you have been buffeted by powerful winds. Yet you have remained solidly anchored to your roots, which you kept strong. In this way, you have continued to bear fruit, for the branches of a tree grow high only if its roots are deep. I would like to speak of some of those fruits, which deserve to be better known and appreciated.
First, your care for the land, which you see not as a resource to be exploited, but as a gift of heaven. For you, the land preserves the memory of your ancestors who rest there; it is a vital setting making it possible to see each individual’s life as part of a greater web of relationships, with the Creator, with the human community, with all living species and with the earth, our common home. All this leads you to seek interior and exterior harmony, to show great love for the family and to possess a lively sense of community. Then too, there are the particular riches of your languages, your cultures, your traditions and your forms of art. These represent a patrimony that belongs not only to you, but to all humanity, for they are expressions of our common humanity.
Yet that tree, rich in fruit, has experienced a tragedy that you described to me in these past days: the tragedy of being uprooted. The chain that passed on knowledge and ways of life in union with the land was broken by a colonization that lacked respect for you, tore many of you from your vital milieu and tried to conform you to another mentality. In this way, great harm was done to your identity and your culture, many families were separated, and great numbers of children fell victim to these attempts to impose a uniformity based on the notion that progress occurs through ideological colonization, following programs devised in offices rather than the desire to respect the life of peoples.
