POPE FRANCIS SHOULD APOLOGIZE FOR TAKING INDIAN LAND AND ABUSING INDIAN CHILDREN

The assault by the Christian Churches on the Sun Religion of the Blackfoot Indians caused the border whites to view the Indians as savages and the United States Government to institute policies to stamp out Indian religion, language, dance, and religious ceremonies necessary to mental and spiritual health of the Indian people. Jesuit priests wrote the Indian religion was a mixture of pantheism and animism in which the Indians believed in evil spirits and labeled the Sun religion as a "superstition." The church joined with President Grant to form the "Peace Policy" in which the Indian children would be separated from their tribe and family, which the president hoped would "advance the metamorphosis of the savages." Special Agent Horatio L. Seward reported in 1890 that of the 1,811 genocide survivors out of tribal population of 7,800 in 1860 that "Perhaps 5% of these Indians are Roman Catholic and the others remain sun worshippers." The church and government schools policy is to beat the Indian out of the child and a white man will emerge from the human wreckage of the Peace Policy. Browning Public Schools have a drop-out rate of 50% that is a major factor in tribal poverty as only 8% go on to higher education after the beatings they take in public schools on the reservation. The Holy Family Mission on the Blackfeet Reservation had baptized 665 Indians, mostly children after being captured by the agency police and returned to the mission and by cutting food rations caused the Indian parents to relent on sending their children to the mission instead of starving. The Holy Family Mission and other church sects were given Blackfeet land to conduct schools and missionary work by the government. In 1881 Agent Young reported the Jesuit priest had run off with three Indian boys and had not put them in school and was living with them somewhere in Montana. There were hundreds of children sexually exploited by Catholic priests in Heart Butte and Browning but it took a century for the lawsuit to finally pay a few hundred dollars to the victims. These priests were on the reservation for 65 years and never charged with molesting girls & boys of their parish. As for tribal and allotted lands taken by the church and never returned the Holy Family Mission has been closed for 50 years but white men live there and own the property. I asked the Bureau of Catholic Missions to help us win our land claims but no! The monsignor merely said, "I will continue to try to understand the points of injustices and duplicity that has been the curse of the Blackfeet Nation." That is the extent of the mission since 1874. Justice is due the Indians. Bob Juneau Sr.