Pope Francis with representatives of Canadian First Nations delegations who visited the Vatican in March. Credit… Vatican Media
TORONTO — Canada’s last church-run schools, which Indigenous children were forced to attend and where many were abused, closed in the 1990s. Since then, the Canadian government and local communities have been working to address the profound damage done there, which continues to reverberate today.
Here are five key moments leading up to the apology Pope Francis is due to make to local communities on Monday.
A brutal system of abuse in the name of assimilation.
The Indian Act of 1876 allowed the Canadian government to establish boarding schools, most of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church and aimed at assimilating native children by erasing their culture and languages.
They were punished for speaking local languages, wearing their hair in braids, or practicing a religion outside of what was taught in school.
For more than a century, approximately 150,000 students attended about 130 schools, where many were sexually abused, malnourished and suffered from poor conditions. Many died or never returned home.
As student numbers dwindled, the last of the schools closed in 1996, ushering in a period of national reckoning, including official inquiries into Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people.
Master Class Action Agreement for Former Students.
Following a lawsuit by former students at the schools, Canadian courts have approved a massive class-action settlement that has paid out more than C$3.2 billion to some 28,000 survivors, according to a 2021 report by an independent panel overseeing the settlement.
In addition to financial compensation, the settlement also included funding for other initiatives, such as memorials and other commemorative projects and a program that provides mental health services to survivors and their families.
A national commission leads to reckoning with the dark past.
A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2007 as part of the settlement agreement, hosted gatherings in seven cities across the country to hear, among other things, the first-hand accounts of local people who had been sent to boarding schools.
At local hearings, survivors shared their stories of Catholic monks raping children as young as 10 and starving schoolchildren resorting to stealing apples from orchards to eat.
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology from the government to Indigenous communities.
Evidence of unmarked graves found in residential schools.
Last year, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia said it found evidence of unmarked graves of 215 children on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, once the largest in Canada with about 500 students.
The discovery, made using ground-penetrating radar, shocked Canadians and revived a national discourse surrounding the horrors of boarding schools.
Several other communities have also announced preliminary findings of possible unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools. Last June, the Cowessess First Nation said it had discovered 751 possible unmarked graves at the site of a Saskatchewan school.
Voyage to Italy and Papal Apology.
In the spring, a delegation of indigenous leaders from Canada traveled to the Vatican and received the expected apology from Pope Francis.
“I feel shame – sorrow and shame – for the role” Catholics played “in the mistreatment you have suffered and in the lack of respect for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values,” Francis said. He also promised to travel to Canada and make a personal apology.
Ian Austin contributed reporting from Ottawa.
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