[Below are three articles by Agnieszka Ruck published recently in the B.C. Catholic, describing prayers and healing in different communities]
Residential school survivor prays for 215 souls
People gather near a cemetery memorial in Fort Providence, N.W.T., to honour lives lost at residential schools, including the 215 children whose remains were recently found in an unmarked grave in Kamloops. (Photo submitted by Monique Sabourin – The B.C. Catholic – CCN)
Related Article, Saskatoon: “Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Saskatoon holds four-day memorial wake for 215 children – LINK
By Agnieszka Ruck, The B.C. Catholic
[Fort Providence, NWT – Canadian Catholic News] – Shoes and stuffed toys surrounded a memorial on the grounds of Sacred Heart Mission School Cemetery in Fort Providence, NWT, last week to honour lives lost at residential schools.
The memorial is a large cement block with the names of some 300 children and adults buried on the Fort Providence site. With no individual grave markers in view, the structure is the only clear sign of the significance of the place.
Several dozen people gathered at the memorial as the group remembered in particular the 215 children whose remains were reported discovered in an unmarked site more than 1,600 kilometres away in Kamloops, B.C..
Among the participants was residential school survivor and Dene elder Monique Sabourin.
“It was really sad for me,” said Sabourin. “I think what hurt me the most was that kids are so innocent. We were brought up with loving parents, but to be dragged away? I want to know, how did those kids, 215, how did they die? Why are they buried there?”
“How did they manage to take the babies away from their parents?”
In the 1960s, Labourin attended LaPointe Hall, a residential school where she was sexually abused by a priest and also faced physical abuse. The experience led to alcohol addiction, a rejection of her Catholic faith, and years of pain. She tells her story and describes her journey toward healing in the 2017 documentary In the Spirit of Reconciliation by local filmmaker and priest Father Larry Lynn.
Monique Sabourin (centre) with Father Larry Lynn and former Lieutenant Governor of B.C. Steven Point at the 2017 world premiere of Father Lynn’s documentary In the Spirit of Reconciliation. (File photo – The B.C. Catholic, CCN)
“How do you forgive? That was the question I asked myself,” she said in the documentary. “How do you forgive something that happened to you as a child, when everything was taken away from you?”
Today, she says that healing journey is still an ongoing process.
“We still deal with this stuff every day,” she said. “I thought it was over, but it’s never over, as long as you’re there.”
For Sabourin, her key to wholeness has been forgiveness.
“Its hard to forgive what happened to you, but you have to forgive to go on. It is what it is. You cannot do nothing with it. It happened. You cannot go back and change it. You just have to forgive and walk with your head up and say, ‘Jesus loves me,’” said Sabourin, who has returned to her Catholic faith and works to help others in Fort Providence overcome addiction.
“I’ve been hurt so many times, I could say ‘I will not forgive.’ But that’s not the answer to anything.”
Since she heard about the discovery of the grave site in Kamloops, she has been lighting candles at home daily in honour of the 215.
“Everybody’s talking about apologies and everything that has to do with residential schools and the 215 kids that they found, but nobody is doing anything for those little souls to go to Jesus,” she said.
At the memorial, “when I heard the sound of the drum, I closed my eyes and in my mind, in my imagination, I saw 215 little souls going up to heaven. It was the image I had. I really pray that they are in heaven.”
Some of her most challenging moments are when people disbelieve that abuses were perpetrated on students at residential schools – comments of the sort she has seen on social media in recent weeks.
“It really, really affected me. I was so emotional, I had to go out and pray.”
In the wake of the Kamloops discovery, she hopes to see apologies from the government, the RCMP, and Catholic leaders.
She said those who insist on an apology from the “Catholic Church” misunderstand the meaning of Church.
“We are the Church. How do we ask for an apology from the Church if we are the Church?” she said, counting herself as part of that body. “We are asking for an apology from church leaders, not from the people.”
She also hopes to see funding for survivors.
“I’m hoping that the government can repay everybody that went to residential school so they can go on their own healing journey. I’m still on my healing journey. You want to do it on your own, but there is no money for it. The government should pay every individual that was in residential school.”
Meanwhile, she holds her head high and teaches her grandchildren about residential schools and what it means to forgive.
“We are loved. We can go on. We can start over with forgiveness, because God loves every one of us. He lay his life down to share, you know. He loves us no matter what.”
One of her grandsons attended the ceremony in Fort Providence and she snapped his photo in front of the cemetery memorial. “I told my grandson, ‘I’m taking this picture of you because those grandchildren are not home, but we are so blessed with you,’” she said.
“Forgiveness is a key to a door. If you open that door and open it wide: Wow, look at the beautiful world. You don’t have to live behind closed doors.”
Tla’Amin First Nation joins with Kamloops in sorrow
Betty Wilson places her hand on a cedar box that contains the names of residential school survivors. The priest in the photo is Father Patrick Tepoorten. (Photo courtesy Betty Wilson – The B.C. Catholic, CCN)
By Agnieszka Ruck, The B.C. Catholic
[Powell River, B.C. – Canadian Catholic News] – Members of the Tla’Amin Nation joined their sorrow with the Tk’emlúps te Secwe’pemc peoples at an outdoor memorial in Powell River to honour those who died at residential schools.
Betty Wilson, a member of the Tla’Amin people, said four members of the community had attended Kamloops Residential School and were deeply grieved to hear of the unmarked graves recently discovered there.
“Like everyone else I was shocked and very upset when I first heard about the children in Kamloops. Tears flowed for the children,” said Wilson.
Despite unpredictable weather, a ceremony went ahead June 9 with brushing of cedar boughs, singing of mourning songs, and praying the Rosary. Community members who had gone to St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission were also in attendance, as were Powell River Mayor Dave Formosa and his wife, and Church of the Assumption pastor Father Patrick Tepoorten.
It was a small, but deeply moving gesture for Wilson.
“My sadness was lifted as we acknowledged in our traditional way, and through Father Tepoorten’s healing prayers, that we need to work together to create a better world,” she said.
At the ceremony, a cedar box with names of Tla’Amin people who had attended residential schools tucked inside took special prominence. The plan is to bring the box into all three local Catholic churches where Masses will be said for all survivors.
“We will continue our healing prayers that there be resolution for the young children buried.”
She added she drew encouragement from Archbishop J. Michael Miller’s letter of sorrow and apology for residential schools, believing it signalled an openness and willingness to work toward reconciliation.
Other ways the Tla’Amin Nation has participated in the mourning of the 215 included holding a moment of silence, inviting students to wear orange, and hosting a display of signs, shoes, and orange T-shirts at Willingdon Beach Park May 31.
Father Tepoorten said the Willingdon Beach event attracted hundreds of people who lined the streets with orange, showing the diversity of those who care about First Nations reconciliation, with old, young, and people of various backgrounds and professions.
“One thing about Powell River that is amazing is that we have a great connection with the city and the First Nations. We work very closely together, there’s no animosity, and there’s lots of back and forth sharing,” he said.
“People are people, whether you are First Nations or a descendant of white colonial people… It’s all of our problem. We all have to work and do something to make things better for our survivors and their children.”
The Tla’Amin community also hosted a “Hang a Heart” campaign that involved displaying orange paper hearts in a public place in remembrance of the 215 children, and all those who have suffered at residential schools.
“Many of our people have since passed away that lived through this system, many of our people never returned home to their families – for this we grieve and for this we spread awareness,” they said in an invitation to participate in these events.
“When we grieve, as a Nation, we come together in our trying times to lift one another up.”
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Faith provides way forward: Seabird Island elder
Elders in the Seabird Island community built this bell tower at their local church. Local resident Richard Moses Louie believes the Christian faith provides guidance for healing and reconciliation. (Photo submitted to The B.C. Catholic, CCN)
By Agnieszka Ruck, The B.C. Catholic
[Seabird Island, B.C. – Canadian Catholic News] – When news of a burial site at Kamloops Indian Residential School reached the First Nations community of Seabird Island, local elders handed out potted pansies as gestures of honour and remembrance.
Seventy-four-year-old Richard Moses Louie made a home for some of the blooms on his veranda.
“There has to be truth and reconciliation,” said the Seabird Island man in an interview with The B.C. Catholic. “They brought that up in the past, a few years ago now, and it seems when things like this that sound horrific come up, we remember that we had the Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] and how this fits in.”
Louie once lived at Kamloops Indian Residential School. When the news broke about the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried there last week, he was shocked that some of the stories he had heard generations ago may have been true.
“It was really something to hear the stories and the hurt and the anger. It was hard to believe, but when we do the Creator’s work, that’s what we have to do: listen to the people and try to console them.”
Louie had attended a school nearer to home and his Indigenous Catholic family in the early 1960s, but he dropped out in 1963 after a car accident killed his parents and two of his brothers.
After some time, he mustered the will to go back to school and it was arranged for him to go to Kamloops. There, he lived in a dorm at the residential school (which in the 1960s ceased running classes and was converted into a residence) and took a bus to nearby St. Ann’s Academy. He remembers the girls on the top floor, the boys on the bottom floor, and a soccer field just outside the junior dorms. He also remembers meeting people of various nationalities at St. Ann’s, something he said prepared him for the real world.
“I was really surprised there is a grave down there that involved so many people.”
After a year in Kamloops, Louie returned to Seabird Island where he has lived and been an active member of the small community’s Immaculate Conception Church decades.
Louie believes his faith provides him guidance on how to move toward healing.
“We have to remember that we have love, forgiveness, and understanding. It’s really pretty hard to forgive the abuser, but I guess that’s where Jesus came in when he said, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do,’” he said.
“So I guess that’s what we should focus on, bringing us together and giving us an opportunity to love, forgive, and understand. [Jesus] has been trying to do that for so long. It’s alright to be doing that in everyday life, but this brings all the people together and we all have to learn to love, forgive, and understand. It’s uniting the people.”
He added he hopes the remains will be identified and returned to their families or communities. He also hinted he might like to hear an apology from Pope Francis.
“People are uniting across Canada, the USA, and around the world to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future, that our people are safe.”
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