Indigenous Justice Requires the Unbiased Truth not Misinformed Hate
By: Catholic Equalizer
Tags: Catholic, Trudeau, Residentialschoolscanada, Indigenous

Indigenous Justice Requires the Unbiased Truth not Misinformed Hate

In the wake of the discovery of unmarked graves at former Residential Schools in Canada, numerous Catholic churches have been burned. Graffiti on church entrances and hate speech have become increasingly more prevalent. This despite the fact that the Residential School system was a government program that recruited Anglican, Presbyterian, United and Catholic organizations into the moral disaster of running the schools.

A handful of Catholic religious orders (a tiny fraction out of hundreds of orders and thousands of Catholic dioceses worldwide, all locally controlled) ran about 60% of the schools that housed Indigenous children that were sometimes forcibly taken from their families by the RCMP in order to assimilate them and eliminate their culture. Mistreatment, lack of food, lack of medicine and poor living conditions led to the deaths of many children at those schools.

On 4 June 2021, more than a century later, after the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former Residential School in Kamloops, BC, the Canadian Prime Minister demanded that the Catholic Church release records, insinuating that there was of a big Catholic cover-up. The fact that past governments had destroyed 15 tons of documents and that the current Liberal government has blocked the release of some of its own records was carefully omitted (see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/residential-school-records-indigenous-1.6083493).

Mr. Trudeau’s comments triggered a wave of anti-Catholic rhetoric and hate against the Catholic Church. He successfully deflected vitriol over the discovery of Residential School graves to the Church and controlled the narrative through a veil of morality. Ironically, such narrative control was exactly the same tactic used by past governments to inspire and mislead Canadians into committing the cultural genocide of the Residential School system.

The Minister of Northern Affairs has said on 26 June 2021 that the religious leaders who ran the schools should be prosecuted, adding fuel to the fire by insinuating the possibility of criminal intent on the part of Catholic leadership and Catholics who were rather naively recruited into collaboration with the evil of Residential Schools.

The cunning narrative perpetuated by today’s Liberal government ignores the horrendously poor conditions at the schools that were a result of severe underfunding from the government at the time. The devastatingly poor conditions not only affected the health of the children at the schools where tuberculosis and other diseases were rampant but made it impossible to transport children back to their families if they succumbed to their illnesses. These findings are part of a 44-page report by Dr Scott Hamilton, an anthropologist at Lakehead University who was retained by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to study the matter of deceased children at the schools (see https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AAA-Hamilton-cemetery-FInal.pdf).

As an undeniable result of the blame the Prime Minister placed on the Catholic Church, the majority of Canadians, in an unprecedented episode of amnesia and prejudgment, now believe that the Catholic Church was primarily responsible for the Residential Schools tragedy. There have been reports of disillusioned Catholics who have fallen victim to a masterful gaslighting by politicians fuelled by an anti-Catholic predisposition.

A close examination of history that has so far been both ignorantly forgotten and carefully omitted would reveal the actual context of Catholic involvement in a government program that was morally flawed, perilously underfunded and poorly managed from the start. Would history have been different if a secular group or the military ran the schools? The answer should be clear. Colonialism was to blame along with the fools and abusers who collaborated with it, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Yet so many have been led astray today and can’t see past their misdirected rage.

Mr. Trudeau continues to demand publicly that Pope Francis come to Canada to apologize for the Residential Schools tragedy in order to hold the entire Catholic Church responsible for Canada’s cultural genocide. The demand is an attempt to drown out the formal apologies already made by the Catholic religious orders that were directly involved, along with the apologies made by numerous archbishops in Canada, even those from dioceses that did not have Residential Schools.

The apology of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008 and the appropriate counterpart of sorrow and anguish expressed by Pope Benedict XVI to Indigenous survivors visiting the Vatican ten months later have been forgotten by the public. So has the Globe and Mail headline of “Pope apologizes for church’s role in residential schools” at the time. The public has also forgotten the letter of gratitude written by Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, to the Pope in 2009: https://www.catholicregister.org/item/33225

Mr. Trudeau presents himself as a public champion and a self-proclaimed voice of morality. He has publicly taken credit for having pressured the Catholic Church to cooperate, making it seem that the Church would not have been cooperative or supportive had he not intervened. This is a falsehood that must be exposed.

Ultimately, the actual history of the schools, once remembered, should dismiss the plague of ignorance that has swept our country. The real question, however, is whether people will be willing to listen to it after so much hatred has transpired. Probably not. But helping our Indigenous brothers and sisters heal from this tragedy means acknowledging the actual truth, a truth free from bias, prejudice and the convenience of a scapegoat.

[A petition signed by over 4,200 people that exposes the manipulation of public opinion by the Canadian government can be found here: https://www.change.org/p/justin-trudeau-it-is-not-right-to-slander-the-catholic-church . The objective of the petition is to bring to light the bias held by many against the Catholic Church while acknowledging the need for reconciliation and healing with the Indigenous peoples of Canada.]