Aboriginal Issues

A Mississauga priest is under fire after a sermon referencing the “good done” by the Roman Catholic church in residential schools, saying some might go so far as to even thank it.

During his sermon at the Merciful Redeemer Parish last Sunday, Pastor Owen Keenan referenced the Kamloops, B.C. residential school where the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation reported it had discovered the preliminary remains of more than 200 children in unmarked graves in May.

“Two thirds of the country is blaming the church, which we love, for the tragedies that occurred there,” he said on a video originally posted to the church’s YouTube page but since deleted. Clips of his sermon continue to circulate on social media.

Right or wrong it doesn’t matter, the Catholic church has lost virtually all credibility due to the enormity of the pedophile priest child abuse scandal . The sharks are circling. Its rainbow coalition of enemies will ensure more church burnings.

Revolutions devour their own? … Indigenous community hurt amid allegations of false identity at Queen’s

Indigenous faculty and students at Queen’s University say the administration has left them in the dark as questions grow in response to an anonymous report alleging six instructors, professors and associates falsely claimed Indigenous identity.

The anonymous report circulated online earlier this month and shortly after its publication, the university in Kingston, Ont., strongly rejected the report’s allegations.

That rejection was then met by an open letter signed by nearly 100 Indigenous academics calling on the university to examine the potential harm of misrepresentation among faculty and staff.

751 unmarked graves found at former Saskatchewan residential school

A total of 751 unmarked graves were found at the site of the former Marieval residential school, the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) and Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan said Thursday.

The Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band lands was burned early Monday morning, the parish confirmed with CBC on Monday.

The St. Gregory’s Church, in the Oliver area on Osoyoos Indian Band lands, was also in flames around the same time.

A real mystery!

There is almost exactly a century separating the governments of Sir John A. Macdonald and Pierre E. Trudeau, but not much difference in their approach to Indigenous issues.

Trudeau’s “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969” didn’t propose separating Indigenous children from their parents and isolating them in schools where they could be abused by nuns and priests, but the strategy was the same: the best way to handle the Indian “problem” was to get rid of the idea of being “Indian” in the first place. Better to turn them into regular old Canadians like the rest of us. As Trudeau saw it, assimilation as a strategy was far from dead, it just needed updating.

A new survey suggests two-thirds of Canadians believe the churches that ran residential schools should bear responsibility for the abuses against children, including deaths, that happened there.

The online survey by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies was carried out about a week after Tk’emlups te Secwepec First Nation said ground-penetrating radar has detected what are believed to be the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

The country has been shaken by the apparent gruesome discovery of the remains of 215 children found buried at a former British Columbia residential school.

There is nothing more devastating than the death of a child, and nothing more painful for Canadians than reconciling some of the past horrors of the country’s residential school system and treatment of First Nations more broadly.