Campaign 2000’s annual in-depth look at poverty reveals that being poor in Canada is perfectly predictable. Canada’s poor are overwhelmingly Indigenous or they are disabled.

It was a shocking revelation. A recent CBC investigation revealed that Dr. Carrie Bourassa, one of Canada’s leading Indigenous health researchers, is actually of Eastern European descent.

When Pope Francis steps onto Canadian soil he will also step into the nexus of pain, sorrow anger and regret that has come to define the relationship between the Church in Canada and Indigenous people. But these failures were not our starting point.

To understand what it means to be Catholic in North America, one must also understand the story of the Indigenous peoples of the land. That is the message behind the new documentary Enduring Faith: The Story of Native American Catholics, produced by the Knights of Columbus.

Over the past few weeks, social media has exploded with anger, sadness and shock as the bodies of hundreds of Indigenous children have been found buried at several former residential schools across Canada.

As the country continues to wake up to the truth that there has been little or no reconciliation with Indigenous people, Catholics are also questioning their Church’s record.

I am a fifth-generation Irish descendent from Southern Ontario, and a third-generation teacher.

VANCOUVER -- Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller reached out to residential school survivors in an interview with an Indigenous news network, apologizing for how representatives of the Church “betrayed your trust.”

When news of the 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School landed in Edmonton, an elder in the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples wanted to put out a statement in Cree. The problem is that survivors of the residential school system lost their language when they were children in the schools.

Somehow a story about hundreds of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School became a story about what Pope Francis should do, not a story about the lives lost or why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau only rushed to provide money for documenting such graves when Kamloops was in the headlines, five years after he first promised to do so.

OTTAWA -- There have been false starts and bitter disappointments before, but Catholic and other faith organizations now see a light at the end of the tunnel in achieving a key aspect of reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

A meeting between Pope Francis and a delegation of Canadian Indigenous people at the Vatican is being planned and expected before the end of the year.

OTTAWA -- Almost 14 years after the United Nations adopted a framework establishing the rights of Indigenous people, Canada is finally on the brink of implementing the historic document.

With the legislation already forwarded to the Senate for study and third reading in the House of Commons expected within days, Canada’s bishops and religious orders have come out strongly in support of Bill C-15, a law that would implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Mere months removed her June 2020 convocation at Calgary’s St. Mary’s University, Kate Gillis’ days are full of Zoom call collaboration and deep-dive independent research.