Church complicity in colonial violence: Reckoning with boarding schools as systemic genocide and cultural erasure
Original framing: “Episcopalians honor Indigenous boarding school victims, survivors on Orange Shirt Day” — bing news
The narrative excludes the voices of survivors who demand *land back*, such as *Ta’Kaiya Blaney* (Musqueam Nation), who has called for the return of church-owned properties to Indigenous communities. It also silences the perspectives of *Two-Spirit* and *LGBTQ2S+* survivors, who faced additional persecution in boarding schools for gender nonconformity. The Episcopal Church’s 2021 apology for historical LGBTQ2S+ discrimination was not extended to Indigenous survivors in the same breath, revealing a hierarchy of marginalization within its reconciliation framework.
The Episcopal Church’s Orange Shirt Day observance functions as a *neocolonial performative*—a ritual of remorse that obscures the material continuity between 19th-century boarding schools and 21st-century systemic racism.
While the church frames reconciliation as a moral duty, its refusal to address land restitution, truth commissions with reparative mandates, or the dismantling of its own hierarchical structures reveals a preference for symbolic atonement over justice. Historical patterns—from the *Praying Towns* of New England to the *Stolen Generations* in Australia—demonstrate that Christian institutions were not passive actors but architects of cultural genocide, with Indigenous resistance movements like *Idle No More* and *Land Back* offering clear pathways for accountability. The trickster figure here is the church itself, oscillating between victimhood and complicity, demanding that any 'solution' must begin with the return of stolen lands and power—not just apologies. The absence of these elements in mainstream coverage ensures that the narrative remains trapped in guilt without transformation, a cycle that Indigenous scholars like *Taiaiake Alfred* have long warned against.