Hurts and healing: Papal visit stirs emotions of First Nation members in Alberta
CBC
WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.
Deep-seated hurt and pockets of hope.
These are among the complicated emotions rippling through an Indigenous community in central Alberta where Pope Francis is expected to deliver an apology for the Catholic Church's role in Canada's residential schools.
"For the amount of trauma … some of us maybe put deep down in ourselves and didn't want to deal with it and now it's all coming back out," said Luci Johnson, a member of the Samson Cree Nation who helps people navigate the court system around Maskwacis, Alta.
"And those are the things that no 'sorry' — [a] five-letter word — is ever going to make us heal."
Pope Francis will be in Canada from July 24 to 29.
On Monday, the first full day of his trip, the Pope will visit the former site of the Ermineskin Residential School in Maskwacis, about 100 kilometres south of Edmonton.
The community is the location of four First Nations: Ermineskin Cree Nation, Samson Cree Nation, Louis Bull Tribe and the Montana First Nation.
Opinions are mixed among nation members about the upcoming papal visit and expected apology. Some, like Johnson, are opposed. Others see it as an opportunity to begin healing.
Honourary Chief Wilton Littlechild of Ermineskin Cree Nation, the former Grand Chief of Treaty Six First Nations and a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said an apology is a chance to forgive.
A formal apology from the Pope was one of the TRC recommendations released in 2015.
"At least for those that have a desire, that want to forgive, will be given that opportunity and that to me is my one ongoing prayer for this visit," Littlechild said last month.
Johnson is a day school survivor; both of her parents, now deceased, were residential school survivors. She respects the chief's call for forgiveness but she wants accountability and not an apology that serves no real purpose other than to reopen old wounds.
In 25 years of working with the legal system around Maskwacis, Johnson has seen the intergenerational effects of residential schools in the cases that pass through the courthouse every day.