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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
Pope Francis is set to arrive in Canada on Sunday for an official six-day visit.
As Dan Karpenchuk reports, there are high expectations of an official apology on Canadian soil to Indigenous people for the wrongs done by the Catholic Church during the residential school era.
In the lead up to the trip, the pontiff sought prayers for his penitential Canadian pilgrimage.
Indigenous people are looking for this visit to bring healing and even action as the Catholic Church has failed to raise all the money it promised to compensate the survivors of residential schools.
Rose LeMay is the CEO of the Indigenous Reconciliation Group.
“My fear is that the apology will be words alone. And there’s been so many requests for the Catholic Church to do good on its settlement, its residential school payment.”
Rose LeMay (Screenshot: The IRG / Facebook)
Also at issue are documents still held by the church relating to the residential schools and for those responsible for the schools to be held accountable.
The pope is scheduled to arrive in Edmonton on Sunday.
The following day he will meet with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people.
Tuesday he will celebrate mass at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, then take part in a pilgrimage to Lac St. Anne, likely to be the largest annual Catholic gathering in western Canada.
Wednesday he flies east to Quebec City where he will meet the governor general and the prime minister, and on his final day he will travel north to Iqaluit and meet with students of former residential schools.
Alaska hands over ICC leadership to Greenland
The Inuit Circumpolar Council wrapped up its three-day general assembly meeting on Thursday.
The non-governmental organization represents Inuit peoples from four Arctic nations.
As Emily Schwing reports, Greenland will assume the chairmanship of the ICC for the next four years.
International chair Dalee Sambo Dorough of Alaska handed over leadership of the Inuit Circumpolar Council to Greenland’s Sara Olsvig.
“By acclimation and for the 2022 to 2026 term, congratulations Sara.”
Olsvig served in both Denmark’s and Greenland’s parliaments between 2011 and 2018. She is also a member of Greenland’s Human Rights Council and Constitutional Commission and an anthropologist.
She gave a brief speech to ICC delegates from Alaska, Canada, Chukotka, and Greenland.
“We are crossing uncharted waters. The pandemic has changed the conditions under which we work and the new geopolitical reality puts pressure on us as a people and to the world around us and on the Arctic as a whole.”
Olsvig says international security and safety for ICC members, including those from Chukotka, in Russia’s Far East is a priority as Russia continues its war in Ukraine.
“As an Arctic people, we Inuit are acutely and painfully aware of the difficult situation that we are in and we are in it collectively across the four nation states that we live in and we are going to row our boat slowly and in a careful manner in the years to come to make sure we are all in the boat.”
She also plans to continue the ICC’s focus on formal participation within the United Nations, including in both the Food and Agriculture and International Maritime Organizations to address concerns about food security and the impacts of increasing industrial marine traffic in the Arctic.
Olsvig says engaging Inuit youth perspectives in that work is paramount.
“I think that we have a task in both reaching and understanding what the youth expects from us as an Indigenous peoples organization.”
An emerging leaders initiative has provided the ICC’s executive council with recommendations that outline those expectations.
The ICC will hold an in-person gathering next summer in Ilulissat, Greenland. Canada will host the next general assembly in 2026.
This coverage is made possible with support from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund.
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