Declan’s Baptism

My son Declan was recently baptized in the Anglican Church. As I am not a Christian it may be surprising that I would participate in this ceremony – especially since I attended the Anglican-run Horden Hall residential school as a day scholar in Moose Factory. I have many friends who have told me horrifying stories they experienced at residential schools, Anglican and others.

But people and institutions can change. And my opinion of the Anglican Church has changed because of their genuine remorse over the pain inflicted at their residential schools. This remorse was eloquently expressed in a recent letter they sent to Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak after her comments about the “good” that the residential schools did for First Nations children. This letter deserves a wider audience, and so I share it in abridged version below:

There are hundreds of students who went to Residential Schools administered by the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC). They have told their stories at our church’s National Native Convocation and at Sacred Circle Gatherings. We have been rendered speechless by what we heard. We have hung our heads in shame and raised them with remorse over the pain our church inflicted upon those children.

There was nothing good about a federal government policy of forcibly removing children “from their evil surroundings”, housing them in schools with the intent of “killing the Indian in the child…and turning them into a civilized adult”. It was an attempt at cultural genocide, an attempt whose failure bears witness to the courage and resilience of those children and their communities. As Elder Barney Williams of the Survivors’ Society has so often said, “We were all brave children.”

There was nothing good about practices of taking away children, removing their traditional dress, cutting their hair, taking away their name, confiscating their personal effects and giving them a number.

There was nothing good about forbidding children to speak their own language, to sing and dance in a powwow, to practice their own spirituality. It was a denial of their dignity and human rights.

There was nothing good about experimenting with children’s diet to monitor the impact on their dental hygiene or their digestive systems. There was nothing good about pressing children into forced labour. It was state-sanctioned cruelty.

There was nothing good about denying a child a celebration of his or her birthday, about separating siblings one from another, not allowing them to be home for Christmas, or to enjoy summer holiday.

There was nothing good about child abuse – and it was rampant in Residential Schools – physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. Such abuses were nothing less than crimes against humanity.

There was nothing good about children going missing and no report being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked graves far from their ancestral homes. It heaped cruelty upon cruelty for the child taken and the parent left behind.

There is nothing good about a lingering and sordid legacy of intergenerational trauma reflected in poor health, the struggle to enjoy healthy relationships, addictions, domestic violence, astonishingly high rates of incarceration and communal dysfunction.

There is nothing good about Indigenous people treated as “second class”, the blatant evidence of which persists in lower funding for health care, education, policing, and emergency health services. It is a travesty.”

This letter meant more than any other statement of remorse I have ever heard. Thank you to the Anglican Church and to my cousin Chris Quinn, who agreed to be Declan’s godfather. This has gone a long way to allow wounds to heal.