Photo: Bethany Koostachin is Swampy Cree from Wasaho Cree Nation-Fort Severn and works with Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay, Ont. Koostachin wants Pope Francis to acknowledge the role the Catholic Church played in the destruction of Indigenous culture and identity. (Mia Sheldon/CBC)

By Jasmine Kabatay - CBC News - July 25, 2022 

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

For young Indigenous people in Thunder Bay, Ont., the ongoing effects of colonialism are with them every day.   

For them, it's a city that doesn't care. It's a city that has been racist and discriminatory toward them, where trust with the police is broken, and where seven young First Nations people died after leaving their home communities when they were forced to go to the school.

Pope Francis is touring three regions in Canada — Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit — for six days through July 29. During the trip, he's expected to expand on an apology he delivered at the Vatican this past spring for residential school abuse in institutions run by the Catholic Church. 

He's called his trip a "pilgrimage of penance" that he hopes can help heal the wrongs done to Indigenous people by Catholic priests and nuns who ran abusive residential schools.

His presence has generated mixed reactions from survivors and their relatives, and youth in Thunder Bay.

'Something you can't ignore' 

Myla Jacob is from the Webequie First Nation and a teenager living in Thunder Bay. When the unmarked graves were detected in 2021 at the former residential school site in Kamloops, B.C., Jacob initially wanted to ignore the news. But she couldn't.

"I realized that it was something that you can't ignore, because it … happened, and to real people." 

It prompted Jacob and other First Nation youth to create the Minogin Gitigaanis Society gardens filled with orange flowers to honour the children who died at residential schools and commemorate the survivors. 

So far, there are two gardens with the flowers at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School for First Nations students and at St. Joseph's Care Group, a local hospital.

Jacob said it made her feel good to honour the past and do what she could to bring more awareness to residential schools and survivors.

Jacob said that through the years, she learned about residential schools from her grandmother, Laura James, who's from Cat Lake First Nation and is a residential school survivor. When Jacob heard the Pope was coming to Canada to apologize, she remained unconvinced. 

"An apology doesn't really have any meaning [or] significance …. An apology won't fix anything now. It won't bring back our culture or language," Jacob said. "It's just words to me." 

James was forced to go to the Pelican Falls residential school, and agrees with Jacob that a visit and any apology wouldn't do much for her or her healing journey.

"For myself, I would say no words coming from anybody is going to bring healing for myself. Personally, I'm on my own healing as I have lived life from day to day … right from that time when I walked out of that school."

James said she thinks about survivors who are older than her and won't get the opportunity to hear an apology. 

She can see many youth looking to reclaim their culture and language, something that shows the resilience of Indigenous people. But when she sees some youth in Thunder Bay, she can also see the displacement continuing.

"If a student from the northern communities has to relocate to an urban centre, which they're not familiar with, and they know nothing about a lot of time, that's a lot of hardship and discrimination," said James.

James said it's now her job to educate First Nations youth.

"Using my language to hear their own history, including what happened here on these grounds … that's part of my healing journey right there."

The continuing effects of colonization 

Bethany Koostachin is Swampy Cree from Wasaho Cree Nation-Fort Severn in Treaty 9 and an art curator in Thunder Bay who works with youth. After growing up in foster care, she realized there wasn't a lot of support for teenagers and she wanted to work with them to help bridge that gap.

At the Regional Multicultural Youth Council, she sees youth with a range of backgrounds from different ends of the spectrum.

Koostachin sees the intergenerational trauma that impacts some youth and herself, and is helping them empower themselves as much as herself, so they "can recognize that they are strong Indigenous people and that they are everything their ancestors could ever ask for." 

Even though she's doing what she can to help youth, she can see the intergenerational trauma and lasting impacts on them, from crises like residential schools and the Sixties Scoop, and even the current child welfare system.

Koostachin is concerned about how conversations around the Pope's visit this week can be triggering and retraumatizing, something she doesn't want to happen. 

"You don't want to subject them to harm or trigger them or anything, or kind of put them on the spot for something they might not know a lot about or don't have, like access, or the knowledge or the tools to know about," said Koostachin.

"For me, it's more like trying to break those terms down, and trying to make it so that they understand it and they understand that this is the effect of racism."

For Koostachin, when she first heard the initial apology in the spring, she was dismissive of it because she finds when people in power apologize, it's performative and something to maintain their image.

"I just found that an apology has little to no impact on my life. I am still going through the effects of intergenerational trauma. I still have to heal a lot of my own trauma from foster care and all the stuff that I've learned about what my grandparents have gone through."

In terms of an apology and visit helping young people move forward, Koostachin hopes it can, but remains unconvinced. She wants to see a more specific apology, beyond what was given in Rome this spring. 

"I don't know what an apology is supposed to do for our youth up in their communities," she said. 

"For the Pope to not acknowledge that this is genocide, to not say the words like: 'Yes, Canada has committed genocide, and I'm sorry that the church had any part of that.' Like at least be more specific about what you put us through."

What comes next? 

While many aren't looking forward to the Pope's visit, Esther Diabo is.

She's a residential school survivor from the Whitesand First Nation and is an Anishinaabe educator and Catholic in Thunder Bay. She practises her traditional Anishinaabe beliefs and the Catholic faith, which both help her on her healing journey.

"When I heard that he was coming, I was very, very, very happy. And for myself — only I can only speak for myself — I wanted to be in the presence of the Pope," said Diabo.

"I was going to go to just to be in the presence and to feel his forgiveness. I want to feel that for myself. I can't feel it for anybody else."

Diabo, who works with youth, said the knowledge some have around residential schools revolves around compensation and what survivors receive. She makes a point to talk about her experience and help them learn their history.

"We take a couple of days, even though a couple of days is not very much, at least they're learning something from someone that actually went to the residential schools and I talk about it."

Her son, Dahwa Diabo, isn't Catholic and has learned a lot of his traditional Anishinaabe beliefs and teachings from his mother. He continues to learn each day.

But he does remain open to the Pope's visit and an apology.

"When I hear of the Pope coming to visit, I do not want an adversary because I want to know what he's offering, what he's willing to do," said Dahwa.

"I can hope because I'm only just one person, that this attitude of openness that he can at least find that among the crowd, because no matter what, there will always be people in opposition."

Growing up and hearing about his mother's experiences in residential school horrified him, and he makes a point to learn and keep learning about this history. When he sees Esther balancing both beliefs, it's inspiring. 

"I see them not as these abstract ideas," Dahwa said. "I see them as living every time that she partakes in her faith. Her life is bringing that spirituality to life as well. When she prays, say when she says her rosaries, she is honing and refining her own life. 

"To me, witnessing this, how to bring a spirituality down into the body, I think is one of the most valuable lessons that I've learned from my mother, because she lives her faith."

Dahwa believes an apology would be a first step and an acknowledgment, but it can't be the end and instead must be something to move people forward.

"We have to become actors of our own now. We can accept the apology, we can deny it. Everyone's feelings are totally subjective. It's up to themselves to decide when they're ready to accept or whether they're not ready to accept."

Dahwa also believes there are ways to move forward that can start with something concrete from the Catholic Church in Canada. 

"There could be a powwow in each region hosted by the church as a gesture that, 'Now we're not destroying your culture. We're willing to host your culture and give you a venue.' That, I think, would be a strong symbolic statement."

---

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for residential school survivors and others affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Support is also available for anyone affected by their experience at Indian or federal day schools. Individuals can access immediate mental health counselling and crisis intervention services at the Hope for Wellness helpline by calling 1-855-242-3310 or online at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

To read this original story and more news, follow this link to the CBC News website.