After the apologies, it’s time for repairs. The Catholic Bishops of Canada pledged, Monday, September 27, to provide 30 million Canadian dollars to support initiatives in favor of survivors of residential schools. These funds will be released over five years for “To remedy the suffering caused by residential schools in Canada”, explain the bishops in a press release. Last week, they issued a “formal apology” for this dark episode in Canadian history.
Over decades, some 150,000 Native American, Métis, and Inuit children have been forcibly conscripted into 139 such residential schools across the country, where they have been cut off from their families, language and culture. Many of them were subjected to ill-treatment or sexual abuse there, and more than 4,000 died there, most of them of tuberculosis, according to a commission of inquiry which had found a real “Cultural genocide”.
A “historical trauma”
It is the discovery of more than a thousand graves near former residential schools run by the Catholic Church in recent months that has brought this dark page of Canadian history to the surface. The country has found itself forced to face the policy of forced assimilation it has pursued towards indigenous peoples.
By these reparations, the Canadian Catholic Church intends “Support programs and projects dedicated to improving life” residential school survivors and their communities, said Bishop Raymond Poisson, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB). Once again, the bishops recognize in the press release published on Monday the existence of a “Historic trauma and still present, caused by the residential school system”.
Last Friday they had expressed their “Deep remorse” and presented “Their unequivocal apologies” to indigenous peoples after the discovery in recent months of more than a thousand graves near former boarding schools run by the Catholic Church.
In the country, very marked by these revelations, many voices were raised during the summer to ask for an apology from the Church and even from the Pope himself.