When I worked as a minister at Cape Croker United Church, I found that every one of the elders had residential school stories. I did a lot of listening. This was a history that was new to me, but vivid and real for the people of the community.

I listened to a woman tell the story of how she had managed to hold on to her language. It required determination and careful, hidden conversations. When she came home, her grandmother said to her mother in Ojibway, "I won't be able to talk to her." And she spoke up in her language. There was pride and pain in her story, pride that she had held on to her language and pain in the knowledge that so many had not.

I listened as a man talked about holding on to the skills he had learned from his father, things like trapping and cleaning game. This too was done in secret, risking a beating if caught.

I have sat in a listening circle as a man slowly and painfully spoke of the sexual abuse he endured from a priest who continued to serve in the Catholic church.

When I started to work at Cape, I shared the job with a woman from the community who was starting her training for ministry. After two years, I left and she carried on. It was really helpful to have someone from within the community to guide me. She too had stories of residential school, stories her father had told her.

About that time, the trial of a pedophile who had worked at the Port Alberni residential school was going on. A United Church near the court house provided a safe place for victims to prepare to testify and to debrief after. Members of that church began to hear stories that were well known in indigenous communities.

There came a call to apologize for the schools. Our church's lawyers advised against it. Given the stories that I had heard, I felt this was a bottom-line issue for me. I could not be part of an institution that did not own up to the evil it had allowed. Our national governing body did not take the lawyers' advice. In 1998, the church apologized to residential school survivors for the harm done and made a commitment to work toward a new way of building respectful and compassionate relationships with indigenous peoples.

When the Truth and Reconciliation commission began, one of the ways the United Church lived out that apology was by turning over all documents related to residential schools that existed in our archives. These documents can be viewed on the Nation Centre for Truth and Reconciliation website (https://nctr.ca/). One of the things that the documents revealed is that some abuse was reported, but those reports were ignored.

A few years after I worked at Cape, I listened to the story of a woman who had gone to work as a dorm mother at a United Church run school. She was straight off the farm, out of a rural high school. No training was offered. As I listened to her, I understood that my church had not provided skilled or equipped people to care for these children.

Not in all cases. There were some good teachers, some who risked their jobs to report abuse. But over all, the oversight, the care, the teaching was inadequate.

About that time, at a meeting of representatives from churches all over Bruce County, I listened as an older retired minister who had just returned from the Prairies spoke about the great work his church had done finding adoptive families for indigenous children, giving them opportunities, they would not have had otherwise. This was before the term "Sixties Scoop" was part of my vocabulary, but what he said felt wrong. Still, I sat silent, which I know was wrong.

I've been reading and thinking about how we take apart systemic racism. I understand why sitting silent that day was so wrong--any indigenous person in that room felt the pain of that man's pride, and they felt it alone. I needed to stand up and say that taking indigenous children out of their communities was as wrong as the residential school system. The policy was intended to wipe out indigenous culture and spirituality. This needed to be said, should have been said out loud and in public by a settler.

The woman I mentioned first attended the school known as "Spanish." I heard last week that the process of identifying unmarked graves is going on at that school right now. This process will trigger memories and open old wounds in the people who attended that school and their families. I hold these people, their communities, in compassion and prayer.

This week we mark the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Stories are being told so that settler communities will understand. Ceremonies are being held for indigenous people to heal. This is an important week as we seek to live together in a good way, with new respect and compassion.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway