Catholic Vancouver July 26, 2022
‘I wanted to hear it for myself,’ B.C. Indigenous man says of apology
By Michael Swan
“I just wanted to hear what he wanted to say,” said Yaa ndakin Yeil, also known as Wayne Carling, a residential school survivor from northern British Columbia, where he went to the Lower Post Residential School.
Carling was among the First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities at Maskwacis, Alta., June 25 to hear Pope Francis apologize for the Church’s role in abuses at Canada’s residential schools.
Carling, whose Indigenous name means “flying raven,” is from Atlin, B.C., and travelled to Maskwacis because “I wanted to hear it for myself. I just wanted to hear what he wanted to say.”
After hearing the Pope’s apology, he said, “They took away our ceremony and our places of ceremony.”
Reconciliation would entail rebuilding “our places of ceremony, rebuild our sacred places” in Indigenous communities.
He also spoke of the destruction of Indigenous languages and the Church’s responsibility to restore and recover lost languages.
“They can do more by putting signs up in our languages. They could fund programs.”
There are also steps Catholics in generation can do to promote reconciliation, he said. “They can talk about it in our schools,” while non-Indigenous Catholics “need to read the Truth and Reconciliation report. They need to talk about it.”
The Catholic Register