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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
Pope Francis continued his Canadian visit with an outdoor mass in Edmonton on Tuesday. Nearly 70,000 people attended the event.
As Dan Karpenchuk reports, there’s still mixed reaction to the apology the pope made to Indigenous people on Monday for church run residential schools.
A day after the pope’s historic apology on Canadian soil, many Indigenous people are still talking about it with anger and sadness being expressed over the apology.
Elizabeth Sackanay is a residential school survivor. She says she does not accept the pope’s apology because he was forced to come to Canada to ask for forgiveness.
Sackanay says the Vatican has still not released files or documents related to the Residential School era.
“I would like the pope and the churches to get involved in what we’re doing. We’re doing healing. And we need help. He can’t just come to Canada and say I’m sorry. He’s got to touch base with us. He’s got to get his workers to help us heal in this journey.”
The pope’s public mass in Edmonton has also been called a missed opportunity.
Corbiere Winkler, an Indigenous priest in Ottawa, says the mass could have been used to celebrate Indigenous traditions and cultural practices, but it was not.
The pope blessed and kissed babies and young children. And the mass focused on grandparents, the elderly, and the family. But Winkler says he was devastated when the eucharistic prayer was delivered in Latin, a language that many Indigenous students heard at the residential schools.
Later in the day the pontiff traveled to Lac St. Anne, north of Edmonton, to take part in the community’s annual pilgrimage.
Wednesday he leaves Edmonton and travels to Quebec City for the next stop in his six day visit.
Indigenous people continue to account for a disproportionate number of missing persons in Montana.
That’s according to the latest report from the Montana Department of Justice. Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton has more.
According to the report, Indigenous people accounted for nearly a third of all 2021 missing person reports in Montana, despite only making up roughly 7% of the state’s total population.
There were 650 reports of missing indigenous people last year, most under the age of 18.
About two-thirds of missing indigenous people were located within a week’s time.
As of June of this year, eight indigenous people remained missing.
Photo: Brian Bull
After a two-year pandemic hiatus, a large cultural gathering recently returned to eastern Oregon.
KLCC’s Brian Bull reports on the 30th anniversary Tamkaliks celebration.
Dozens of dancers dressed in feathers, beadwork, and porcupine quills marked each pow-wow’s grand entry.
Regional drum groups played as well with a procession of Appaloosa horses circling the gathering for other events.
The Tamkaliks gathering is for descendants of the Wallowa Band of Nez Perce who were forced off their lands in 1877 and pursued by the U.S. Army just shy of the Canadian border.
Bobbie Conner is one of the event organizers.
“We believe the land hears our prayers. Feels our footsteps on the earth. And the land is happy to welcome us back. But we also believe that there is a light in the earth that lights up when we bring ceremony to the landscape. And it lights up our hearts when we gather to celebrate this magnificent country that we come from.”
Another event commemorated Native children who went missing during the boarding school era.
One cause for celebration this year, besides renewing Tamkaliks, is the Nez Perce Tribe’s recent acquisition of 148 acres that formerly formed an ancestral village in the town of Joseph.
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