There’s a famous story in the ceremonial lodge attended by me and my family.
One afternoon, while talking about Catholic-run residential schools and boarding schools, one of our wisest elders and teachers, the late Edward Benton-Benai, stood up.
“If Jesus were here today,” he announced to the lodge, “He would not be sitting in a Catholic church, but here, in a circle, with us.”
I’m no expert on Jesus, but I do know four things about him.
The first is that, the Bible says, he advocated to love all people, and particularly those whom the majority of the world overlooks, forgets and treats poorly.
The second is that he refused to support theft, violence, and authoritarian violence. He resisted colonization, particularly by the rich and the powerful.
The third is that he saw life, agency, and language throughout the universe, and especially in things such as mountains, trees, and stones.
In Luke 19:40, for example, he tells his disciples that if they stay silent about his work, it won’t really matter because “the stones will cry out.”
Considering these, the fourth thing I know is that Jesus would make a pretty good Anishinaabe.
He definitely would not approve of the conduct of Catholics in Canada.
Jesus would not accept that thousands of children died while under the care of priests and nuns in schools or that the whereabouts of many are unmarked or unknown.
More recently, though, I am 100 per cent certain Jesus would not condone the occupation of stolen lands for Catholic churches, the shielding of Catholic clergy who abuse Indigenous children, and the refusal of Catholic leaders to pay residential school survivors restitution – not to mention the secret agreement in 2015 negotiated with the Tory government of Stephen Harper to get out of paying altogether.
Jesus might appreciate apologies (Catholic leaders in the United States added their own last week for Indian boarding schools), but I’ll let him be the judge of that.
I challenge anyone to argue with me. My email is below.
So, what does Jesus think about stealing?
In May 2022, in recognition of the arrival of First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders at the Vatican to receive the Pope’s apology for the church’s role in residential schools, Catholic leaders created a small display of Indigenous items from the church’s archives.
Among the century-old objects were an embroidered pair of Cree gloves, carved face masks (likely of Salish and Squamish origin), a Gwich’in belt for a child, and an Inuvialuit kayak.
These were just a sample of the items held by the Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum — an institution created by Pope Pius XI in 1925 after he issued an edict to bishops across the globe to send “gifts” from the cultures they had encountered.
The museum’s website says it holds “thousands of prehistoric artifacts from all over the world and dating from over two million years ago, to the gifts given to the current pontiff; from evidence of the great Asian spiritual traditions, to those of the pre-Columbian and Islamic civilizations; from the work of African populations to that of the inhabitants of Oceania and Australia, and the Indigenous Peoples of America.”
For the real-life Indigenous people who arrived at the Vatican in May 2022, though, these objects were not “gifts” but stolen encyclopedias of knowledge and culture.
For over two years, communities have asked for some of these items back — and documentation on what other items are held in the Vatican archives.
Catholic leaders have publicly said they will share the information and return the items, but almost nothing has happened.
At the G7 summit in Italy last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used his brief time with Pope Francis to ask for the items to be returned.
“I thanked His Holiness for taking up the work of reconciliation,” Trudeau shared on social media. “I advocated for the next step — returning cultural artifacts from the Vatican to Indigenous Peoples in Canada.”
Let me be clear: the Catholic church in Canada has made significant strides in recent years.
The 2016 statement by the Canadian Council of Bishops (later affirmed by Pope Francis) rescinding the Doctrine of Discovery is an important step.
The papal apology in July 2022 was significant too, and particularly the declaration by Pope Francis that Indigenous Peoples, while practising their own cultures and ceremonies show evidence of the “presence of God in each of their faces.”
Every day I meet Catholics, some of them Indigenous, who feel sad and confused by the conduct of their own church.
I also understand that change requires diplomacy, patience, and time.
Jesus certainly preached that.
Jesus was also good though at identifying hypocrisy, lies, and the obvious.
And, without a doubt, he would want Indigenous Peoples to get their “gifts” back.
The question is whether Catholics believe him.
niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist
Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.
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