Presbyterians visit Birdtail Sioux First Nation to apologize for church’s role in residential school

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This article was published 20/06/2017 (3015 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BIRDTAIL SIOUX FIRST NATION — Members of the Presbyterian Church of Canada visited Birdtail Sioux First Nation last weekend to personally apologize for their church’s role in running Birtle’s residential school and the dark legacy it has left behind.

As part of the denomination’s Healing and Reconciliation National Tour, 33 members from across the country were told of the hurt their church exacted, toured the community and moved toward forging a new, positive relationship with Birdtail Sioux First Nation.

Melody Bearbull, a community member who led visitors on a tour of the First Nation on Saturday, said the church’s visit is an important step.

“This is the first time they came to our community and said sorry for what they did, the atrocities they did, in the residential school,” Bearbull said. “Therefore, we’re moving forward now, in a healing way.”

The Presbyterian Church of Canada ran the residential school in Birtle from 1889 to 1975.

In testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which chronicled the pain the country’s residential schools inflicted, former pupils of the Birtle school described abusive experiences.

The report mentioned a truck accident from 1942 in which two boys were injured. A single truck was driving 70 boys to the fields. An Indian Affairs official, in bafflement, questioned how the principal could allow such travel.

The school building is now abandoned and derelict.

David Phillips, who resides in Uxbridge, Ont., was asked by the national church to lead the reconciliation tour, which included stops in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Kenora, Ont.

They visited two of their church’s 11 residential schools, located in Birtle and Kenora.

“I think we’ve made it very clear that we’re sorry,” Phillips said.

“We certainly have to recognize the past, but what are we doing to rectify it? Where’s the reconciliation? It’s not going to be on a piece of paper, it’s got to be with the activities we do — and I keep saying that, what are you going to do about it?”

As an example, his church in Uxbridge is redirecting its missionary work from overseas to Kenora, to help indigenous people there.

The Presbyterian Church in Canada first confessed its role in the tragic legacy of residential schools in 1994.

During a walking tour of Birdtail with their guests, Bearbull shared their plans to bring the “heartbeat back,” by giving the youth activities to do and about efforts to build a community hall.

At one point, she pointed off to the valley where Birdtail residents were laid to rest.

Bearbull and the Presbyterians bowed their heads in prayer, reflecting on the lives of those who went to the residential school and those who never returned.

After, visitors were brought to a large canopy tent people were preparing to set up.

“Let’s see if we can help the church,” Bearbull told her guests.

“For good this time,” a Presbyterian woman replied.

After an arson attempt damaged the church in February, local Presbyterian congregations responded by donating a tent to be used as a short-term replacement. It arrived a week ago.

On Saturday, indigenous and non-indigenous people worked hand-in-hand to set up the tent, while other people volunteered to clean up and begin repairing the church, which still stands.

“We’re building things up,” Jean Kim, a Presbyterian from Thornhill, Ont., said as she watched more than a dozen members of her denomination hold up the tent’s poles, before they were fastened.

Assembling that tent, a new community meeting place, is another example of how the Presbyterian church intends to live out the spirit of confession.

“It’s been a really healing kind of experience for me,” Kim said of the tour.

“You can just see the repairs happening, kind of one person at a time, one glimpse at a time, so there’s this kind of hope.

“It’s funny, I was thinking to myself, I don’t know if I’ve felt the sense of community that was really here today, that I’ve ever really felt.”

Doug Hanska, a Birdtail councillor who played the drum at the honour song to thank their guests, likened the healing journey of residents to a blade of grass that grows time and again. In both cases, they continue on.

“The stop they did in Birdtail, I know it may not mean much to a lot of people, but to some of us it means a lot,” he said. “We can forgive and move on, like our teachings tell us.”

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