Cree singer reflects on 'speaking the law' to Pope Francis
Pope Francis visits Alberta
Fri, July 29, 2022
By Anna Mehler Paperny
TORONTO (Reuters) - A Cree woman who captured global attention with her anguished song before Pope Francis on Monday said she was moved to do so when he donned a gifted feathered headdress without first removing his skullcap - something she saw as disrespectful.
Si Pih Ko, a Cree woman from Manitoba, stood in her beaded regalia and belted out an ancient Cree song - "Our village" - with a rhythm similar to the Canadian national anthem as tears streamed down her face.
"He didn’t remove his law before allowing our law to be placed on his head," she told Reuters by phone from Winnipeg, adding the pope could have given the headdress back instead.
Shaking with emotion, Si Pih Ko, 45, ended her song with a statement on indigenous law, fist raised, before turning her back and walking away.
As she sang, Francis stood and watched. The pontiff is in Canada to apologize to indigenous people for abuse in government schools run by the Roman Catholic church.
The poignancy of singing before the pope in a language priests and nuns beat indigenous children for speaking was not lost on her, Si Pih Ko said.
"It felt good, being able to just sing it and speak it. And he could not destroy it in me."
She said she had wanted to be at the event in Maskwacis, Alberta, not to hear the pope's apology but "to have that opportunity to speak the law to him. No apology will ever make things right."
She said she knew she would be "speaking the law" to the pope somehow, but added: "I didn't think it would be right in the centre, hand up like that."
She said that in her mind as she sang were the indigenous women, men and children who would never come home.
"Everyone who lost their lives fighting against the system, with all odds against them, that’s who I was there for."
(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Pope Francis visits Alberta
Fri, July 29, 2022
By Anna Mehler Paperny
TORONTO (Reuters) - A Cree woman who captured global attention with her anguished song before Pope Francis on Monday said she was moved to do so when he donned a gifted feathered headdress without first removing his skullcap - something she saw as disrespectful.
Si Pih Ko, a Cree woman from Manitoba, stood in her beaded regalia and belted out an ancient Cree song - "Our village" - with a rhythm similar to the Canadian national anthem as tears streamed down her face.
"He didn’t remove his law before allowing our law to be placed on his head," she told Reuters by phone from Winnipeg, adding the pope could have given the headdress back instead.
Shaking with emotion, Si Pih Ko, 45, ended her song with a statement on indigenous law, fist raised, before turning her back and walking away.
As she sang, Francis stood and watched. The pontiff is in Canada to apologize to indigenous people for abuse in government schools run by the Roman Catholic church.
The poignancy of singing before the pope in a language priests and nuns beat indigenous children for speaking was not lost on her, Si Pih Ko said.
"It felt good, being able to just sing it and speak it. And he could not destroy it in me."
She said she had wanted to be at the event in Maskwacis, Alberta, not to hear the pope's apology but "to have that opportunity to speak the law to him. No apology will ever make things right."
She said she knew she would be "speaking the law" to the pope somehow, but added: "I didn't think it would be right in the centre, hand up like that."
She said that in her mind as she sang were the indigenous women, men and children who would never come home.
"Everyone who lost their lives fighting against the system, with all odds against them, that’s who I was there for."
(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Pope Francis speaks to journalists aboard the papal flight back from Canada Saturday, July 30, 2022, where he paid a six-day pastoral visit. Pope Francis wrapped up his Canadian pilgrimage by meeting with Indigenous delegations and visiting Inuit territory in northern Nunavut. In one of his addresses, he assailed the Catholic missionaries who "supported oppressive and unjust policies" against Native peoples in the country's notorious residential schools and vowed to pursue truth and healing. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/ Pool via AP)
NICOLE WINFIELD
Sat, July 30, 2022
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis agreed Saturday that the attempt to eliminate Indigenous culture in Canada through a church-run residential school system amounted to a cultural “genocide.”
Speaking to reporters while en route home from Canada, Francis said he didn’t use the term during his trip to atone for the Catholic Church’s role in the schools because it never came to mind.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined in 2015 that the forced removal of Indigenous children from their homes and placement in the residential schools to assimilate them constituted a “cultural genocide.”
Some 150,000 children from the late 1800s to the 1970s were subject to the forced assimilation policy, aimed at making them fully Christian and Canadian. Physical and sexual abuse were rampant at the schools, and children were beaten for speaking their Native languages.
“It’s true I didn’t use the word because it didn’t come to mind, but I described genocide, no?” Francis said. “I apologized, I asked forgiveness for this work, which was genocide.”
Francis said he repeatedly condemned the system that severed family ties and attempted to impose new cultural beliefs as “catastrophic” to generations of Indigenous peoples.
In the main apology of his Canada trip, delivered Monday, Francis spoke of “cultural destruction,” but he didn’t use the term “cultural genocide” as some school survivors had hoped and expected.
“It’s a technical word, ‘genocide.’ I didn’t use because it didn’t come to mind, but I described that, and it’s true it’s a genocide,” he said Saturday.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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