The parishioners turn slowly to the east. Then to the south, west and finally to the north. Later, Percy Flett, an aboriginal elder, explains that the Four Directions honour several things.
“We acknowledge the rising sun, and we say thank you Creator. We turn in the four directions to follow the setting of the sun. It is also about life. When the sun comes up we are born. We become teenagers, and then at the end of the day we honour our grandparents.”
'We destroyed their spirit'Julie Bell, Catholic Register Special WINNIPEG - Archbishop James Weisgerber remembers the weddings, during his years of ministry with aboriginal communities, in Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask. “People would try to do what they saw happening in the city. The men would bring big cars from the city and everybody would watch as they came roaring over the hills. And the bride dressed like a Hollywood bride. It didn’t quite work. But they had nothing else.” It was much more than a culture gap. It was the aftermath of generations of what Weisgerber calls the “assault on the rituals and the religious celebrations of aboriginal people.” Well intended or not, the damage done during those early years is tragically apparent today. It is a subject close to Weisgerber’s heart. He was born and raised in Saskatchewan. Today he is president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and archbishop of Winnipeg. According to the last census, 15 per cent of the people in those two provinces are aboriginal. He is blunt about the lives they live. “When we destroyed their culture, we destroyed their spirit and their soul. And that’s why there’s all the poverty and violence.” In this context, culture extends beyond the normal distinguishing characteristics of literature, food, dance or dress. Weisgerber calls it the basic way in which we relate to reality: “It’s the meaning of family, man, woman, the meaning of the Earth. And how you live because of that.” When that perception of reality was denied and denounced, Weisgerber says many aboriginal people were without a cultural compass as the missionaries brought the word of God into their lives. “The Gospel is announced to the people. They live in a particular kind of culture, so they receive it in that culture. And that’s when the Gospel is really planted, when it becomes part of that culture. That never really happened with the aboriginal people.” What remains is a legacy that Weisgerber calls “the biggest issue facing us in Manitoba” — as a province, and as a church. In 2006, one in 10 people in Winnipeg identified themselves as aboriginal. The number of people who said they were Indian, Metis or Inuit increased by 22 per cent over five years. Weisgerber says the church is trying to gain a better understanding of the history and meaning of these traditions. There are plans for a study by anthropologists and theologians to try to determine what adaptations the church can make. “The difficulty is that we don’t have any aboriginal priests or theologians, and so it’s always a kind of folk history kind of approach.... It really has got to be the aboriginal culture that’s showing us how to do this.” And Weisgerber says as aboriginal people become increasingly aware of their history and the impact of colonization, there is a “deep, deep anger” over what has happened. The result is a distrust of both the church and society in general. |
Flett points to the colours of the Medicine Wheel — one on each wall of the church.
‘They represent the four races. And the elements. Yellow is air. Black is earth. Red is fire, and white is water.”
This is Kateri Tekakwitha , Winnipeg’s only Catholic aboriginal parish. In its earliest incarnation, it was called the Boscoe Centre — a ministry in the core area set up by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Winnipeg archdiocese in 1962.
In 1977 the centre was closed and the ministry began to share space with a local Catholic church. But according to a retrospective by Fr. Dominique Kerbrat, one of the founding priests, the need for an aboriginal parish became clear a year later at a meeting of native peoples: “Their most important dream was that there be established in Winnipeg a native parish they can call their own. . . a church with a steeple on it.”
The dream became reality in 1990. The parish’s namesake, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, is known as “Lily of the Mohawk.” She received her first Communion at a Jesuit mission near Montreal in 1676. She died at the age of 24 years. She was beatified in 1980.
Kerbrat’s retrospective describes the evolution of the parish: “Kateri has become the centre where aboriginal peoples from out of town turn to when in the city — while at hospitals, for wakes and weddings, counselling.” He also describes “a people in pain”; poor and mostly unemployed, dependent on welfare, struggling with alcoholism and violence.
Today, many of those challenges endure for Manitoba’s First Nations and Metis. A 2006 report by the provincial government says when compared to the general population, aboriginal people have significantly higher rates of binge drinking, cigarette smoking, obesity and incarceration. The life expectancy of aboriginal people is shorter.
Greg Dunwoody is a non-aboriginal parishioner at Kateri. He began his work with native people more than 30 years ago, when he travelled with the Oblates to northern Manitoba communities. Today, he is a chaplain at a provincial jail near Winnipeg.
“I work with people who are hurt and abandoned. When I come to church on Sunday I also find a lot of hurt and abandoned people.”
But Dunwoody says the ongoing struggle for the basics of life — jobs, food and shelter — has also forged people who are resilient and grounded in the every day.
“Their lives have more immediacy. Life is precarious, closer to the edge.”
Dunwoody says the result is a practical and honest approach to most things. In his words it is “a simplicity, directness and earthiness that sustains me.”
This is apparent in the faces of two elderly women who welcome people coming through the door. During a “healing Sunday,” the entire congregation takes part. One by one, or as a family, in full view of the church, people spend a few minutes with an elder and a priest or chaplain. They form a circle, put their arms around each other, and there is the whisper of prayer.
This can be perplexing to strangers because if we believe the mainstream media, the relationship between the Catholic Church and aboriginal people has been damaged beyond repair by residential schools and an assault on native culture.
Marsha Missyabit is a Metis woman who has been at the parish for 18 years. She pauses and acknowledges that these are “touchy subjects” for aboriginal people. Then she says: “We try to find ways to break through that. We try to give history back to people, especially older people.”
Missyabit says at Kateri Tekakwitha the goal is to honour and celebrate who we have been. And who we are.
“There is the importance of our culture. At the same time there is the need for our Catholic faith. Here, we allow native people to be native, to speak their language and practise their culture. And be Catholic. It is all about self-identity.”
(Bell is a freelance writer in Winnipeg.)