WARNING: This story contains disturbing details.
It was a raw and powerful moment that seemed to stop time: a song performed emotionally in Cree to the tune of Canada’s national anthem by an indigenous woman wearing traditional dress.
In an interview with CBC News on Thursday, Si Pih Ko, also known as Trina Francois, said the song’s lyrics were an old ballad about the land and the people. Other speakers of local languages have translated it as: “Our creator, keep our sacred land, Canada. Our land here, Canada. Our sacred land.”
After singing, amid applause and cheers from the crowd in Maskwacis, Alta., Si Pih Ko spoke directly to Pope Francis in Cree, his voice strong in his anguish.
“Here you are served the spoken law. We, the daughters of the Great Spirit and our sovereign tribal members, cannot be coerced into any law, any treaty other than the Great Law,” she later translated for CBC News.
LOOK | Si Pih Ko’s message to the Pope:
Si Pih Ko sings Cree after Pope’s speech in Maskwacis, Alta.
Si Pih Ko, also known as Trina Francois, sang a message in Cree to the national anthem in an unscripted moment during Pope Francis’ visit to Canada.
“We have appointed chiefs in our territories. Rule yourselves accordingly. ‘Hello, hello’ does not mean ‘thank you’. It means I have nothing more to say,” he told the Pope in Cree.
Si Pih Ko had not planned to speak during the ceremony to mark the first day of Pope Francis’ “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada, but said he had to when the Pope received a headdress and placed it on his his cap or zuquet. .
To her, this was a sign of disrespect.
“Silence is power, but I couldn’t stay silent,” he later told CBC News.
“She took a stand”
In Edmonton, Métis Sixties Scoop survivor Brenda Hatt saw it all, tears streaming down her face. She said she felt, for the first time, as if someone was speaking for her.
“He put his fist in the air. That’s very strong symbolism around the world. He took a stand,” Hatt, 54, said.
Sixties Scoop survivor Brenda Hatt was one of the many people deeply affected by Si Kih Po’s message to the Pope. She said she feels like it was a turning point in her own journey to connect with her Métis roots. (Ty Ferguson/CBC)
Growing up in English households, Hatt didn’t learn their traditional language, so he didn’t understand exactly what was being said.
But he said it resonated deeply.
“You could hear the passion and the pain in his voice,” she said. “She spoke for a lot of people across Canada and the fact that she’s a woman is even more powerful.”
The moment has been shared around the world on social media, with people saying they were shaken to the core, their pain like a knife to their heart.
A Twitter reaction to the Si Pih Ko song performed in Cree during Pope Francis’ visit to Maskwacis. (BSwirlsi/Twitter)One person writes “if my heart had a face” on Twitter in reaction to Si Pih Ko’s emotional song. (quoth_the_rave/Twitter)
“She spoke from her perspective as a woman”
William Elvis Thomas watched with pride from the home community of Si Pih Ko, the Cree Nation of Nisichawayasihk, 800 kilometers north of Winnipeg.
“I love the fact that she had the courage to say what she said and take a stand for what she believes,” said Thomas, who heads the community’s Nihitho Language and Culture Unit.
Thomas knows Si Pih Ko personally and is also fluent in the specific Cree dialect he spoke, “the language of the four winds or the four spirits,” which has been passed down by elders living in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
William Elvis Thomas is an elder from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, Man., Si Kih Po’s community of origin. He knows her personally and said he was proud to see her stand up so strongly for what she believes in. (Karen Pauls/CBC)
Thomas said it is difficult to translate the words precisely into English, but he used the term for Canada’s land, Kakanatahk, which means “that which is sacred.”
“She spoke from her perspective as a woman. It is included in the language when she speaks and says that we are as part of a sovereign group and we are the women of the group,” Thomas said.
The message itself was a rebuke to the Pope, the Catholic Church and the colonizing countries of Britain and France, he said.
“They had no right to come in and do what they did to displace our sacred and traditional ancestral laws that we had in place,” he explained.
“She assures that we still have this and that we want it to be respected and that the Pope must recognize it.”
“He spoke for many of us”
Back in Edmonton, Brenda Hatt says the message is even more powerful now that she understands.
“She got our point across, not just her point, but our point… That we’re still here, that, even through it all, all the hundreds of years of trying to eliminate – us in Canada, and I don’t. I don’t say that lightly. There was a plan to genocide the indigenous people of Canada. But you know what? We’re still here.”
Hatt said it feels like a turning point in his own life.
Brenda Hatt, a four-year-old girl living in an Alberta foster home as part of the Sixties Scoop. She said Si Kih Po’s message resonated deeply with her, even when she didn’t fully understand what was being said. (Courtesy of Brenda Hatt)
Taken from her mother by Alberta Social Services when she was just four weeks old, sent to what she describes as “horrible” foster homes and adopted at age 13 by a white family, she tries to connect with her lost Metis heritage . Hatt recently learned that his late grandfather was a residential school survivor.
“I lived in a foster home where he straight up told me he was going to beat me to Indian and at the time I didn’t even know I was Indian or what Indian was. But that was instilled in me at a young age that I was something to be ashamed of, that I didn’t look into anything to do with my family lineage until I was 40,” Hatt said.
Hatt is not religious and said the Pope’s apology doesn’t mean much to her, though she’s glad he apologized to all residential school survivors.
Still, he will advance one thing from his visit this week.
“We can’t change what has happened and we have to move forward, and we have to move forward together,” he said.
“And to belong to a group of people who have survived hundreds of years where they weren’t supposed to survive is a powerful message. And she’s standing, walking forward, putting her fist in the air and saying, ‘We’re still here.’ . ‘ How can anyone not be proud of her?”
A mission in progress
Si Pih Ko says she is honored by this response.
“I hope it brings people back to the land. Our way of life,” he said.
An activist most of his life, Si Pih Ko lives in a tipi as part of a protest camp on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature. She said this experience has given her more confidence to voice her ongoing fight against the child welfare system.
“I fought for two years to get my little ones back, and it shouldn’t have been like this,” she said.
“Residentials continue in the child care system, and if I were to ask the survivors today: ‘What would you like me to do? Speak for the children of today, who are in care?’ Because I will do whatever it takes. Your pain, your words, through me. I will.”
Support is available for anyone affected by their experience in residential care or recent reports.
A National Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line has been set up to support alumni and those affected. People can access crisis and emotional referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health counseling and crisis assistance are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by chat at line a www.hopeforwellness.ca.