‘Our people needed us’: Reflections from First Nations youth as Pope’s tour wraps up
As they watched the large screens broadcasting the service, Stevie Hall-Polchies, 20, and Abigail Brooks, 23, watched their nation’s elders and survivors closely, ready to offer support at the first sign of need.
Hall-Polchies’ grandmother, who was inside the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré service, was not a residential school survivor, she said, but suffered gravely from systemic racism as a tuberculosis patient at one of Canada’s notorious Indian hospitals. The hospitals — an extension of the— subjected many patients to abuse, malpractice and painful, outdated or sometimes experimental medical procedures.
Indigenous people of all ages from coast to coast to coast have attended the Pope’s stops in Alberta, Quebec and Nunavut, each for their own deeply personal reasons. Often, it was to support other people — survivors, family members and their communities.Cameras clicked wildly at Jack Saddleback in Maskwacis, Alta., as he held up a transgender and two-spirit pride flag during the chiefs’ grand entry at the park arbour.
“I feel like it sort of makes a tourist attraction out of trauma and lived experiences, but at the same time, the thing that grounds me the most is thinking of my kookum and grandparents,” she said, referencing the nearby Ermineskin Residential School. “This is really about centreing their experiences.
“When I speak to many of my knowledge keepers and elders on a one-to-one basis, and we can have that understanding about we as people, asthey get it. My grandparents, even thinking about them, you know, they get it. They see me … I am nothing less than anyone else.”Pope Francis expresses ‘heartfelt pain’ at the ‘oppressive’ policies against Indigenous people in Canada
The Pope has spoken about “projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation” that stripped Indigenous peoples of their culture and languages, and impacted the relationships between grandparents, parents, and children for generations. He has referenced the importance of a “serious investigation” into what took place at residential schools, and to assist survivors with the healing journey, but has not suggested the Church will lead it.
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