Pope Francis has just completed a visit to Canada the main purpose of which was to apologise to the indigenous communities for the harm that Catholicism did to the native religions and culture. The Pope expressed sorrow and requested forgiveness. And he did this at several events where he met with leaders of the indigenous communities, referred to as nations, and at places they considered sacred.
The trigger for all this was the discovery, between May and June 2021, the remains of about 1,148 children in unmarked graves at the sites of three residential schools. These graves spoke out loudly of how the system worked, when the schools did not maintain proper records of who died, and the bodies of the children were not returned to their families for proper burial.
The Indian Residential School system was meant for the children from indigenous communities who were sent there by the government (forcibly in many cases) to be stripped away of their native languages, values, and religious belief systems and assimilated into white culture. The system existed for about a hundred years and the last of these schools closed in the 1990s.
There were also stories of sexual abuse of the children while the schools were in operation. The Canadian government funded a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which presented its report in 2015 calling the whole practice one of cultural genocide. The children were taught that the indigenous spiritual traditions were pagan and sinful and they had to follow Christianity.
When the Canadian graves were discovered, the US government looked into its situation since a similar residential school system ran there too and also found similar mass graves.
First-hand experience
This Pope was ideally situated to make this kind of apology. Born Argentinian, he has seen first-hand the effects of colonialism and the struggle of the indigenous peoples in Latin America. Even in 2015, on a visit to Bolivia, he asked for forgiveness for the crimes committed by the church against the native peoples.
An important connection the Pope made during his speeches was that between colonialism and religion. Colonialism drew its inspiration initially from mercantilism, wherein colonies’ economies were manipulated to make the colonial power wealthy. As a driving force, mercantilism gave way gradually to imperialism and the power game. But religion also provided a strong though not often discussed justification for colonialism. Christopher Columbus often wrote about converting the people of the conquered lands to Christianity. Missionaries rode the wave with the colonial masters.
The residential schools in the US and Canada to which the indigenous children were sent were state supported but run by the Christian missionaries. So the acculturation was both the policy of the church and the state and they worked closely to propagate it.
The history of the Catholic Church has been closely intertwined with colonialism. Beginning in 1452, successive popes subscribed to the Doctrine of Discovery which gave authority to European monarchies to seize ‘new lands’ meaning lands not inhabited by Christians. This legitimised the colonial grab.
But apologies aside, the Catholic Church has not given up on evangelism, which is an important tenet of Christianity. Only the means used would have to make it more compatible with local cultures.
Native peoples all around the world have had their cultures overridden by that of the invading peoples. When this took place in the context of colonialism, it was combined with economic power and related incentives which were too powerful to resist. Colonialism rested on an underlying belief in the superiority of the white man who wielded the colonial power and this was toxic in every aspect of life that it touched, including how bureaucracy worked, social relations with the natives and the education systems they implemented.
Decades after winning freedom, erstwhile colonies are still working towards exorcising themselves.
Droupadi Murmu, who was recently elected as India’s President, is from an indigenous tribal community. Perhaps her elevation will draw attention to the beliefs and cultural values of those communities and allow them their space in the multi-religious country.
The writer is an emeritus professor at Suffolk University, Boston