{"id":217603,"date":"2022-08-08T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=217603"},"modified":"2022-08-05T06:10:29","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T05:10:29","slug":"surrendering-power-to-reverence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/08\/surrendering-power-to-reverence\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrendering Power to Reverence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>3 Aug 2022 – <\/em>\u201cI humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his \u201capology tour<\/a>\u201d across Canada \u2014 for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American \u201cresidential schools\u201d on this continent, which more accurately might be called concentration camps for 6-year-olds.<\/p>\n

This papal mega-apology, while cheered by some, has been widely criticized as little more than a wimpy shoulder-shrug \u2014 sorry about that \u2014 for a governmental, church-complicit policy, lasting well into the 20th century, of snatching indigenous children from their families and squeezing their culture, if not their life, out of them.<\/p>\n

Clearly an official apology is hardly adequate for this egregious wrong \u2014 one facet of the larger goal of genocide and continent-theft \u2014 but it does throw some raw, horrifying light on who \u201cwe\u201d are . . . on the moral values of white, European, a.k.a., colonial, culture, which continues to hold enormous global power. Could the pope\u2019s apology be the starting point of actual learning, troubling awareness and, good God, real change?<\/p>\n

What has to happen first, of course, is taking a look at the reality in question. The phenomenon of residential schools, which permeated both the United States and Canada, may have had their origins in the early missions<\/a> the white, Christian conquerors began building in the 18th century, the point of which was to eradicate indigenous culture and convert pagans to the true religion (and, oh yeah, grab their land).<\/p>\n

By the mid-19th century, residential schools had become law in the U.S. Indigenous children were taken from their families without permission and, in essence, rebirthed as white people. The schools\u2019 premise was infamously summed up in the words of Captain Richard Henry Pratt<\/a>, headmaster of the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania:<\/p>\n

\u201cA great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was not a platitude, the evil opposite of \u201clove thy neighbor.\u201d This mandate was taken seriously. The Indigenous Foundation<\/a> points out some examples of the raw inhumanity to which the children were subjected, For instance:<\/p>\n

\u201cAttendance to the boarding schools was made mandatory by the U.S. government regardless of whether or not Indigenous families gave their consent. Upon arrival, Native children were given Anglo-American names, bathed in kerosene, given military-style clothing in exchange for their traditional clothing, and their hair would be shaved off for the boys and cut into short bob styles for girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let me repeat: bathed in kerosene! An awareness of the monstrous inhumanity being deployed suddenly goes straight up my nostrils.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s more, of course: \u201cNative students were not allowed to speak in their Native languages. They were only allowed to speak English regardless of their fluency and would face punishment if they didn\u2019t. The discipline enforced at these boarding schools was severe. . . . Additionally, Native students were neglected and faced many forms of abuse including physical, sexual, cultural, and spiritual. They were beaten, coerced into performing heavy labor. Their daily regimen consisted of several hours of marching and . . .<\/p>\n

Fasten your seat-belts: \u201c. . . recreational time consisted of watching disturbing movies such as Cowboys and Indians.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s all those, uh, unmarked graves. The Indigenous Foundation points out that medical attention was scarce and infectious diseases sometimes ravaged a school and, guess what? Kids died. Lots of them died. And: \u201cParents were rarely informed of their children\u2019s deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just sit with that for a moment.<\/p>\n

The dehumanization present here is virtually total. And it\u2019s the work of government plus religion, opening up a question that, I fear, the pope did not address: Who are we that we could do this?<\/p>\n

Can we begin answering this question? I can\u2019t speak for Canada here, but the United States has spent most of its existence spiritually encaged by what I might call the \u201ccritical race theory mandate.\u201d Don\u2019t look at it, don\u2019t talk about it, don\u2019t acknowledge it. Don\u2019t make yourself (or me) uncomfortable. But, OK, if you insist, sorry about that. Sorry for slavery as well. Sorry for the looming Armageddon.<\/p>\n

As Politico noted, regarding the pope\u2019s visit to Canada, \u201cmany he came to comfort say he failed to offer a concrete way forward. Aside from a vague pledge to conduct a \u2018serious investigation into the facts of what took place,\u2019 many observers were left wondering what happens next. What concrete actions will the pope take to improve the lives of survivors?\u201d<\/p>\n

I would expand this question. Beyond reparations, what, oh God, can we learn? Can we sit in a circle with the wounded survivors and learn from them<\/em>? It is, after all, the indigenous cultures of the planet that, among so much else, have begun bequeathing to the dominant culture such social sanities as Restorative Justice: turning our focus from punishment to healing, from separation to wholeness.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll things are interrelated,\u201d notes Rupert Ross<\/a> at the end of his book, Returning to the Teachings<\/em> (quoting from the book The Sacred Tree<\/em>). \u201cEverything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can we learn this politically? Can we stop being conquerors? Can we surrender power to reverence?<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Aug 2022 – \u201cI humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.\u201d So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his \u201capology tour\u201d across Canada \u2014 for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American \u201cresidential schools.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1619,97,303,1620,866,2002,2702,1670,572],"class_list":["post-217603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-canada","tag-catholic-church","tag-christianity","tag-indigenous-culture","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-native-americans","tag-native-cultures","tag-pope-francis","tag-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}