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	Making Amends for a Terrible Past By Andrew Hanon Edmonton Sun May 4, 2009 http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2009/05/04/9337241-sun.html The day after Joe Courtoreille was laid to rest, Pope Benedict finally apologized for the abuses that were heaped on native children in Catholic-run residential schools. Joe, who died at age 78, was a Cree elder and member of the Alexander First Nation, 50 km northwest of Edmonton. As a small boy, he was taken from his home to live at St. Albert's Indian Residential School in St. Albert, which was located on the land now occupied by the Sturgeon hospital. It was operated by the Catholic Church from the 1930s to the 1950s and was one of two residential schools in the community. The Edmonton Indian Residential School was operated by the Presbyterian and later United Church from 1924 to 1968 on the site of what is now Poundmaker's Lodge treatment centre. For more than a century, the federal government funded the church-run boarding schools in an effort to eradicate native culture by taking aboriginal children from their families and converting them to Christianity. But many of the 150,000 children in the program were subjected to unspeakable cruelty, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Joe recalled seeing young bed-wetters have their faces rubbed in the soaked sheets before getting strapped. He remembered 5 a.m. masses and long, gruelling hours on the school's farm. He was forbidden to speak with his sisters, even when they were in the same class. Joe was molested by male and female staff. The scars on his body were a chilling record of the beatings he endured, the seething anger that he carried into adulthood a testament of the emotional torment. Like so many of the children raised in residential school, Joe grew up to become a morose, violent alcohol abuser. In his late 30s, he went blind drinking bad moonshine. It was a turning point for him. "I used to figure alcohol would cure that feeling," he said last year. "It did for a while, but then things just got worse. I used to be so angry, and sometimes I didn't even know why." He quit drinking and started to deal with the demons that haunted him since childhood. He began to reacquaint himself with his culture and heritage. He stopped being ashamed of who he was. Joe became a mentor and role model for troubled young men, patiently teaching them that the fires of adversity can either destroy them or forge them into stronger men. He and many other former students made their peace with the abuses they endured, but it still hung over them like unfinished business. Last June, Joe was on hand at the River Cree Resort and Casino, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper's unequivocal apology for the government's role in residential schools was shown live on a giant TV screen. He told me at the time that a weight had been lifted. "They should have done it a long time ago," he said. "But it's OK. He did apologize for everything, and I accept that." But he told me he wanted to hear the Catholic Church own up to its part, to acknowledge that the way he and his schoolmates were treated was sadistic and dehumanizing. He wanted to know that the Church had learned from the past. On Wednesday, in a closed meeting with native leaders in Rome, Benedict finally said the words. I pray you heard them, Joe. Rest in peace. Contact: andrew.hanon@sunmedia.ca
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