The Church Must Change its Thinking about Indigenous Peoples:  An Interview with Harry Lafond on what it means to be both Cree and Catholic.

by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers

Sojourners, August 2022, pp 32-37

In April [2022], Pope Francis made a long-awaited apology to a Canadian delegation of Inuit, First Nations, and Metis leaders at the Vatican for the “deplorable” violations children suffered at Catholic-run Indian Res­idential Schools for more than a cen­tury. The pope committed to come to Canada in late July to make his confes­sion personally to residential school survivors and their descendants for “the abuse and disrespect for your identity, your culture, and even your spiritual values.”
In this historic apology, Pope Francis stated, “Clearly, the content of the faith cannot be transmitted in a way contrary to the faith itself.”
This watershed moment comes 25 years after Harry Lafond-a Catholic and then-chief of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatch­ewan -raised issues of Indigenous faith and culture in a historic audience with Pope John Paul II during the Vatican’s 1997 Synod of the Americas. An educator and Catholic deacon, Lafond and his ancestors have a long history of building bridges between settler and Indigenous communities.

Full Article:  The Church Must Change its Thinking about Indigenous Peoples (link) SKU: E22-1-F