For elder Angie Crerar of the Metis Nation of Alberta, the journey she undertook to the Vatican on Monday was a lifetime within the making.
At 85 years outdated, she met with the Pope head to head.
Her pleasure was palpable as she and a delegation of different Indigenous leaders moved by way of St. Peter’s Sq. following the morning’s assembly.
Talking with the Pope had been “superior, it was so fantastic,” she stated, calling Pope Francis “so sort.”
However the assembly was no mere social name — Crerar was one in every of three Metis delegates who introduced to the Pope on Monday, within the first day of conferences aimed toward in search of an apology and restitution for the Catholic Church’s function in working most of the establishments in Canada’s residential faculty system.
In 1947, when Crerar was simply eight years outdated, she was taken by the RCMP together with her youthful siblings and compelled to attend the St. Joseph Residential Establishment in Fort Decision within the Northwest Territories for 10 years.
“There have been three of us,” she stated, describing when she and her siblings had been taken. “Three, 5, and I used to be eight. And my sister was screaming, we didn’t know what was occurring.”
She suffered many types of abuse for attempting to guard her members of the family throughout their time within the faculty, and nonetheless carries these scars on her again.
“All of us received a quantity. I used to be quantity six,” she stated. She nonetheless remembers the numbers the college gave her sisters as properly: 17 and 63.
Round 150,000 Indigenous kids are believed to have gone by way of the residential faculty system, which was designed to eradicate Indigenous tradition. The faculties had been conceived of by the Canadian authorities, however greater than 60 per cent of the faculties had been operated by the Catholic Church.
Hundreds of kids who had been pressured into these colleges by no means got here house to their dad and mom.
Assembly the Pope is the most recent step in Crerar’s sophisticated journey with the Catholic religion, one thing she nonetheless feels related to. As a woman, she believed the one one that might assist her was the Pope.
She remembers her father telling her that the Pope was “an important particular person on the earth.”
Arriving in Vatican Metropolis, she considered her father, she stated, and felt “mild as a feather.”
The abuse she suffered in residential faculty left indelible marks, however one necessary a part of her restoration has been studying forgiveness, she stated, to not erase the previous, however in order that her grandchildren gained’t carry what she has carried.
“Right now is about our personal life, our management, our family,” she stated.
Her focus now could be on being a powerful chief and voice for the subsequent technology of Metis folks, whereas nonetheless honouring those that have gone on earlier than her.
Going into the assembly with Pope Francis, Crerar had stated that speaking concerning the kids who died of neglect, abuse or sickness throughout their time at residential colleges was a precedence, significantly within the wake of lots of of unmarked graves being discovered exterior of residential colleges throughout the nation up to now 12 months.
Greater than 1,800 confirmed or suspected unmarked graves have been recognized thus far, with solely a fraction of colleges searched.
Whereas her group solely spent one hour with Pope Francis, Crerar feels eternal change will come out of this assembly, together with the necessary work of figuring out the Indigenous kids within the unmarked graves.
“Simply discover our youngsters, that’s primary,” she stated.
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