Maka Black Elk, executive director of Truth and Healing at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, described the scene on Twitter as a '#toosoon moment.' “It creates unnecessary noise regarding Indigenous peoples’ choices where the real scrutiny should be placed on the Pope and that entire institution.” Something they’ve been waiting for, for decades. “It distracts readers from the Pope’s apology and survivors’ stories who sat in those chairs listening to his every word.

“When I saw the headdress being placed on the Pope, I immediately thought ‘absolutely not.’ We are not running that photo,” said Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, editor of ICT, formerly Indian Country Today. Leading U.S.-based Indigenous news outlet ICT made a deliberate decision to not make the war bonnet a focus of their papal visit coverage. The discoveries of hundreds of potential burial sites at former schools in the past year have drawn international attention to the schools in Canada and their counterparts in the United States. The aim was to Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous Canadian governments considered superior. More than 150,000 Native children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture. But I’ll be honest, it’s difficult!,” added Horse Capture, a member of the A’aniiih Nation. 'I am practicing ‘If you can’t say anything positive, don’t say anything at all’ mantra. 'I have so much to say about this, and all of it negative,' tweeted Joe Horse Capture, vice president of native collections and curator of Native American History and Culture at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. Russ Diabo, a member of the Kahnawake Mohawk tribe in Canada and an Indigenous advocate and policy analyst, described the scene as “pageantry” and the pope's statements as “facile.'ĭiabo said on Twitter it was 'the Catholic Church and Canada collaborating in creating a mythology for a shared 'Reconciliation' agenda narrated by prominent federal collaborators/residential school survivors!' Some members of Indigenous tribes said they found the gesture incongruous with the past transgressions at church-run schools that Francis apologized for. Yet this revered regalia also represents an image that has been co-opted from tribes in popular culture for decades, feeding stereotypes in everything from Hollywood films, to fashion runways to Halloween costumes. Some modern-day Native American leaders have been given war bonnets in ceremonies accompanied by prayers and songs. For many Plains tribes, for example, each feather placed on a headdress has significance and had to be earned through an act of compassion or bravery. Headdresses historically are a symbol of respect, worn by Native American war chiefs and warriors. The Vatican obviously understood the symbolic significance of the moment, putting the photo on the front page of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano under the headline “I humbly beg forgiveness.”

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