Former Kamloops school resident says faith provides way forward

To contribute to a dialogue of healing and understanding following the Kamloops Indian Residential School announcement, The B.C. Catholic is sharing stories of individuals who have been working toward truth and reconciliation. We’ll publish first-person accounts as well as interviews over the coming weeks. 

When news of a burial site at Kamloops Indian Residential School reached the First Nations community of Seabird Island,  local elders handed out potted pansies as gestures of honour and remembrance.

Seventy-four-year-old Richard Moses Louie made a home for some of the blooms on his veranda.

“There has to be truth and reconciliation,” said the Seabird Island man in an interview with The B.C. Catholic. “They brought that up in the past, a few years ago now, and it seems when things like this that sound horrific come up, we remember that we had the Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] and how this fits in.”

Louie once lived at Kamloops Indian Residential School. When the news broke about the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried there last week, he was shocked that some of the stories he had heard generations ago may have been true.

“It was really something to hear the stories and the hurt and the anger. It was hard to believe, but when we do the Creator’s work, that’s what we have to do: listen to the people and try to console them.”

Louie had attended a school nearer to home and his Indigenous Catholic family in the early 1960s, but he dropped out in 1963 after a car accident killed his parents and two of his brothers.

After some time, he mustered the will to go back to school and it was arranged for him to go to Kamloops. There, he lived in a dorm at the residential school (which in the 1960s ceased running classes and was converted into a residence) and took a bus to nearby St. Ann’s Academy. He remembers the girls on the top floor, the boys on the bottom floor, and a soccer field just outside the junior dorms. He also remembers meeting people of various nationalities at St. Ann’s, something he said prepared him for the real world.

“I was really surprised there is a grave down there that involved so many people.”

After a year in Kamloops, Louie returned to Seabird Island where he has lived and been an active member of the small community’s Immaculate Conception Church decades.

Louie believes his faith provides him guidance on how to move toward healing.

“We have to remember that we have love, forgiveness, and understanding. It’s really pretty hard to forgive the abuser, but I guess that’s where Jesus came in when he said, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do,’” he said.

“So I guess that’s what we should focus on, bringing us together and giving us an opportunity to love, forgive, and understand. [Jesus] has been trying to do that for so long. It’s alright to be doing that in everyday life, but this brings all the people together and we all have to learn to love, forgive, and understand. It’s uniting the people.”

He added he hopes the remains will be identified and returned to their families or communities. He also hinted he might like to hear an apology from Pope Francis.

“People are uniting across Canada, the USA, and around the world to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future, that our people are safe.”

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