Day school survivors worry they will be left out of whatever apology Pope makes for residential schools
CBC
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
Margaret Swan's voice becomes strained as she shares her experience at the Indian day school where she spent five years of her life.
"There was so much wrong. So many wrongs done in those schools," said Swan, a member of the Lake Manitoba First Nation in Manitoba.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she was one of many children forced to attend Dog Creek Day School, which was operated by the Roman Catholic Church as part of a partnership with the Canadian government.
She says her experience at the school was filled with sexual, physical and emotional abuse. When it began, Swan was just seven years old.
Swan said the school was meant to strip Indigenous children of their culture and language, and left her and many others in her community with "no idea" how to properly parent their children. She said the community is still trying to climb out of the rut the system left them in.
Despite the schools having been active across the country, experts say Canada has yet to truly reckon with the concept of day schools to the extent it has with residential schools.
Day school survivors had no role in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, despite many reporting the same abuses suffered by residential school survivors.
Now, they may be left out of an important conversation with the Catholic Church that is set to begin this week.
On his trip to Canada, Pope Francis is expected to expand on the apology he made in Rome for the conduct of some members of the Roman Catholic Church in the residential schools once operated by his faith's priests and nuns.
What is not clear is whether the Pope will apologize for the entirety of Catholicism's role in what the TRC has called the "cultural genocide" carried out on Indigenous people in Canada.
In a statement, the Canadian College of Catholic Bishops said the Pope "will listen intently to Indigenous peoples, which will help inform his remarks. Ultimately, the decision about what he wishes to communicate belongs entirely to the Pope himself."
Experts say that only recognizing the harm of residential schools would be problematic, as they were only part of the "system of Indian education" in Canada.
Operating under the umbrella of the then-Department of Indian Affairs, the education system was composed of residential schools, day scholars and day schools.
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