Germaine McKenzie was filled with hope as she traveled the eight hours from her Innu First Nation on Quebec’s North Shore to attend the Mass celebrated by Pope Francis Thursday morning at the Basilica of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré, near Quebec City.
Ultimately, the experience was frustrating for Mackenzie, who survived nine years at a boarding school as a child. But she says it confirmed something she’s practiced for years: relying on community and indigenous spirituality to heal, instead of colonial institutions.
Although the papal visit represented an important milestone for many survivors gathered at Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré, for some like McKenzie it became less about the pope and more about the power of the assembly.
“I thought I would be excited, emotionally. I thought that with everything we survivors have been through, finally the papal visit would be big, that it would be historic – but we haven’t heard a word about boarding schools,” Mackenzie said outside the basilica.
In his homily, Pope Francis said Catholics must “look in a new way at many of the events of our own history.”
“Brothers and sisters, these are our own questions and they are the burning questions that this pilgrim church in Canada is asking with sincere sorrow on its difficult and demanding journey of healing and reconciliation,” he said in Spanish.
Later that evening, the pope, for the first time during his visit to Canada, acknowledged sexual abuse of “minors and vulnerable people.”
Germaine McKenzie, a social worker and school survivor from Washat McMani-Uttenham, said she was disappointed by the papal visit. (CBC)
Unfulfilled expectations
Mackenzie, who is a social worker in Washat McMani-utenam, where she is from, got the impression that the pope wanted to move on from the apology he made in Lac Ste. Anne, Alta., and repeated Wednesday in Quebec City.
“However, I am not ready. I still have dreams about being at boarding school,” she said.
McKenzie predicts that the survivors will now “stick together. We heal together, with local spirituality. This is what I prefer. We talk about our wounds, what we’ve been through and where we’re going.”
Romeo Saganache, a school survivor from Wassouanipi in central Quebec and a former lawmaker, also found the pope’s apology “very disappointing.”
“Many of us saw this as an incredible opportunity for the pope … to apologize on behalf of the institution, the Roman Catholic Church,” Saganash said on CBC Quebec’s Breakaway Thursday night.
WATCH | Survivors’ perspectives on the papal visit to Quebec:
Strong emotions at the Pope’s liturgy in Quebec City
Outside Pope Francis’ Mass in Quebec City, chiefs, survivors and members of the local community spoke of their conflicted emotions during the service.
Another shortcoming, according to indigenous leaders, is that the pope did not address the Doctrine of Discovery, the centuries-old edict that paved the way for much of the colonization of the New World. For decades there have been calls to repeal the papal bulls that make up the doctrine.
That flaw was literally thrust into the faces of clergy and dignitaries on Thursday, when documentary filmmaker Sarayn Fox and her cousin Chelsea Brunel unfurled a large white banner on the basilica’s pulpit reading “Repeal the doctrine” as Francis sat.
“I never want to be seen as disrespectful to our survivors, but this is to move the conversation forward, and sometimes young people have to stand up and be thugs,” Fox told the CBC afterward.
Returning control
Sixties Scoop survivor Jimmy Peter Ainish sat under some trees near the basilica, among family members all wearing bright orange shirts representing the Every Child Matters movement.
Ainish is from the Naskapi Nation of Kawavacikamah near Quebec’s border with Newfoundland and Labrador, 950 kilometers north of Quebec City. Being among the other survivors was the most important thing to him.
“Being comfortable with other survivors and supporters is just something that everyone needs sometimes, even me. The support is there,” he said. “Because I think everybody needs to understand that we, the indigenous people, have been through a lot.”
Raquel Bacon of the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamah said the pope’s homily Thursday morning in Quebec evoked a mix of emotions. (CBC)
The systems that created boarding schools, day schools and the Sixties Scoop — and the resulting trauma — are still at work today, Ainish said.
Echoing McKenzie, Ainish said the way forward was to reassert local self-government. He recently suggested to a leader in his community, the Naskapi Nation, that they create their own board of directors to protect youth.
“We were taken from our parents, from our family. Well, we still have that youth protection system that continues to take our children, our grandchildren into foster homes and put them in an environment different from the one they were raised in,” he said.
Based on 2016 census data, 52.2 percent of children in foster care in Canada are Indigenous, but represent only 7.7 percent of the child population.
“To start something, to make a choice for ourselves and for good services; our youth not being taken from our community’ is what Ainish would like to see.
Raquel Bacon, who is from the same community as Ainish, said the papal apology and homily brought her comfort, but also stirred up a range of emotions about her mother’s experience at the boarding school.
“I just can’t imagine how they take her away. I think she was gone for two years, about five years old. And it hurts,” Bacon said, adding that she wonders what the people who took her mother said to her grandmother at the time.
McKenzie, who traveled alone to Quebec to attend the Mass amid her summer vacation, says she was looking forward to continuing her healing journey on her own terms.
“We are no longer subservient. We are moving forward,” she said. “No more ‘Do this, do that.'”
On Friday, Mackenzie will leave Quebec City and continue her vacation with a visit to her son in Gatineau.
Pope Francis is scheduled to leave Quebec on Friday at 12:45 p.m. for Iqaluit. The morning before his departure, he met first with members of the Society of Jesus, followed by a delegation of indigenous people from Eastern Canada.
Support is available for anyone affected by their dorm experience or the latest reports.
A national Indian school crisis line has been set up to provide support for ex-students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health counseling and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness Hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or via online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
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