AFN chief criticizes lack of women set to speak at anticipated papal apology Monday

When Pope Francis visits Maskwacis in Alberta on Monday to deliver an anticipated apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) will be in the audience with residential school survivors, but will not be presenting on stage.

Chief RoseAnne Archibald, speaking to media Sunday, stated that she had only just been told that day she wouldn’t be speaking officially at Maskwacis, despite planning to help welcome the Pope.

This means that there are no women in leadership roles involved in this event, she said, which she called “disturbing” in light of her request to be part of the official proceedings.

“There have been a lot of difficulties with this particular trip, and one of them is that there are no women in leadership voices at all in this whole Edmonton process,” she said. “We had asked as National Chief that I’d be given a minute or two to welcome the Pope to Maskwacis and be a part of that official welcome to that territory along with the Chief and the Grand Chiefs, and I was told today by Archbishop Smith that that just wasn’t going to happen.”

Pope Francis arrived in Canada Sunday for what he called a “penitential” trip, which will last six days and see the Pope travelling to numerous communities across Canada with the goal of working toward reconciliation.

• Pope arrives in Canada for 'penitential' visit aimed at Indigenous reconciliation

Starting in the mid-1800s, Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools across Canada, which were intended to erase their culture and language. An estimated 150,000 children went through this system, suffering neglect and physical and sexual abuse, with the last school closing in 1996.

While the Canadian government created the system, more than 60 per cent of the schools were directly run by the Catholic Church.

For years, there have been calls for the Pope to deliver an apology on Canadian soil, calls that only got louder when hundreds of unmarked graves began to be confirmed at former residential schools last year. The Pope’s first public statement in Canada will occur Monday in Maskwacis, where the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School is located, and is anticipated to be that apology.

But while many are hopeful that the Pope’s trip to Canada will aid in healing, it has not been a seamless process.

Archibald was among the delegation that welcomed the Pope at the Edmonton airport Sunday.

“The first thing I did was, on behalf of First Nations across Turtle Island, I welcomed him to the land,” she said. “This was a promise that I had made, that when he made his journey here, I would greet him, and so that was part of it. I also asked him to revoke the Doctrine of Discovery, that was one of my requests when I saw him, and I also told him I’m really looking forward to his apology tomorrow in Maskwacis.”

It’s the only event I’ll attend, because it’s on one of the former institutes of assimilation and genocide, and so I think it’s important to be there with survivors.”

Archibald was intending to speak at the event as well.

In a letter on Friday directed to Archbishop Richard Smith of the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, Archibald expressed that she was anticipating being able to welcome the Pope at Maskwacis as part of the official program for that day, stating that she looked “forward to an opportunity to speak in Maskwacis” on the stage following the traditional welcome to the territory.

Finding out Sunday from Archbishop Smith that she would not be part of the official proceedings was disappointing, she said, particularly because she was the only woman set to take part in an official capacity.

“The other thing I told Archbishop Smith is, I’m really disappointed in the suppression of women’s voices, but what is the Church doing for women in leadership roles, did they have any women in leadership roles in the Church — and they don’t,” she said. “So this institution is archaic, and they need to be modernized, and I know that this Pope has been working on some of that work, but there’s a long way to go with the Church in relation to the oppression of women particularly.”

Archibald, who was elected AFN National Chief in 2021, is the first-ever woman to hold the post. Although briefly suspended last month, a vote at the AFN general assembly in early July prevented the suspension from continuing, keeping her at the helm.

The uncertainty over whether she is part of the official program at Maskwacis or not feels like one more instance of the Indigenous community being left behind in the papal visit planning process, she said.

In her Friday letter, she added that the AFN had to figure out the schedule based on the papal visit website.

• Where is Pope Francis going during his 6-day visit to Canada?

“Despite a lack of concrete or written information about what’s happening specifically across the country, my staff and I were able to glean from information released to public through the papal visit website and press clippings what we understand to be the Pope’s itinerary,” she wrote in the letter.

In previous statements she has spoken out about First Nations not being “the driving force in the planning of this state visit,” claiming that they had been kept to the “periphery of the planning process” while the Catholic Church planned the majority of events.

On Sunday, she again raised her concerns over the Church using the trip to fundraise as well.

“That’s a part of the problem we’ve had with the Church is that they have not been really including us in the proper planning of this process, this has been very unilateral, and we don’t feel that it has been about survivors, it has been more about the Church promoting the Church’s idea, fundraising for the Church when they’re asking people to pick up their ticket,” she said.

Those who book their tickets for the papal event on Ticketmaster have been prompted to donate money to a registered charity – the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which Archibald called “inappropriate”.

“I want to remind people that this is about survivors, that this whole process is about supporting and standing beside and standing behind our survivors,” she said. “We have to refocus on what we’re really doing here, and that’s about survivors accepting – or not accepting – and listening to that apology from the Pope.”

Although Archibald is not a residential school survivor herself, her mother, sister and two siblings all attended St. Anne’s in northern Ontario.

“Four members of my immediate family were in an institution of assimilation and genocide, and so even as I flew here, I was just so overcome with emotion and there were different times on the plane where I really had to stop myself from breaking into a deep sob,” she said. “I’m an intergenerational trauma survivor, and there’s so many people like me, but there’s actual survivors that are going to be at the event tomorrow, and the emotional level there is going to be so raw and high in terms of pain and suffering.”

Archibald added that despite the issues that have cropped up already on this papal visit, she told the Pope at the airport on Sunday that she was looking forward “to walking that healing path forward.”

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If you are a former residential school survivor in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419

Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.