Decree 4, Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Relations

I once thought that work with Indigenous people was an example of the second Universal Apostolic Preference (UAP), walking with the excluded. Now, I see it as an example of UAP 1—showing the way to God—and being shown the way to God—in partnership with Indigenous people.

This change in my perspective came through many dark consolations of the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises—a journey that began with decree 4 of GC 32.

In the excitement that flowed from Vatican II and more immediately from decree 4, the Jesuits in Canada founded several social justice institutions in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One was the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre, founded in 1984 in Espanola, Ontario, and built by Jesuits and Anishinabe people together, the Anishinabe being a group of related Indigenous nations in the Great Lakes region of North America. The recognition by GC 32 that social injustice prevents finding God gradually changed our understanding of the traditional “Native Missions” in Canada by helping us recognize the inherent value of Indigenous spiritualities. Furthermore, it prepared us to accept that we had contributed to colonization and its devastating impacts on Indigenous people.

The Anishinabe Spiritual Centre dedicated itself to the training of Indigenous Catholic ministers and offered a culturally appropriate gathering place for Indigenous Catholics. To these ends, it celebrated the liturgy in inculturated ways, formed Anishinabe men for service as deacons and priests, trained Anishinabe women for ministry in roles that the local diocese of Sault Sainte-Marie officially recognized as its Diocesan Order of Service, and promoted regular contact between Indigenous people and Canadian Jesuits in formation. Then, in May 30, 2025, the ownership and governance of the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre transferred from the Jesuits to Indigenous Catholics, with ecclesiastical sponsorship from the diocese and bylaws combining civil, canon, and Anishinabe law. While motivated partly by diminishing numbers of Jesuits, this transfer took an important step in the empowerment of Indigenous Catholics within the church and in the decolonization of Jesuits and our relationships with Indigenous people.

Let me relate some of how this happened. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) worked from 2008 to 2015 to receive and document the testimonies of Indigenous people who as children had attended Indian Residential Schools in Canada and to provide a safe forum for them to discuss their experiences. The goal here had to do with recognizing publicly the harmful things the children experienced and the ongoing consequences of these harms so that this acknowledgement could facilitate healing and promote reconciliation among the former students; the government of Canada, which owned the schools; and the Christian churches that managed them.

The Indian Residential Schools operated from the late nineteenth century until the 1990s, and the Jesuits ran one of them. The Canadian government had intended the schools to help consolidate the colonization of the territory by extinguishing Indigenous cultures through “re-educating” their children into “white” ways. To this end, the schools separated children from their families, communities, cultures, languages and spiritualities. The schools also provided occasions for physical and sexual abuse. In cooperating with the government by managing and staffing residential schools, the churches thus mixed evangelization with colonization. And while many church people taught sincerely, most staff shared to some degree the dominant and colonizing attitudes of much of the population.

Now, I turn to my personal story. On May 31, 2012, I began my tenure as provincial of the Jesuit province of English Canada. On that same day took place in Toronto a large, regional assembly of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Because my advisors had told me that few representatives of the Catholic Church would attend, my attendance as Jesuit provincial and a Catholic priest would carry weight. However, when I entered the downtown convention center in my clerical suit, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. Since my Roman collar, rather than representing peace, solidarity and reconciliation, triggered traumatic memories of the abuse that the Indigenous attendees had suffered in residential schools, those attendees seemed visibly uncomfortable with me. For this reason, I tried to “dress down” by removing the tab from my collar and taking off my jacket; but it was still obvious that I was a priest.

As such, I felt self-conscious, ashamed, and vulnerable. I also felt confused that my vocation and mission, which meant so much to me, seemed to threaten these people. To put this another way, my blind spots seemed to corrupt my holiest desires. However, although I desperately wanted to retreat to the comfort of other church people at the gathering, it felt important to associate with the Indigenous participants and experience the shame and vulnerability of the collective responsibility I shared with my Catholic ancestors for contributing to the suffering of the Indigenous people.

While I felt uncomfortable, however, I did not compare it to the disruption and violence that these people had experienced for generations. Furthermore, once I accepted my situation, I noticed that no Indigenous person treated me rudely. On the contrary, some even tried to make me feel welcome. And so, here I was, a potential trigger for traumatic memories; and some of those who had those memories were reaching out to me. My heart broke.

Here, I must point out that my ability to bear the responsibility for the damage that we had done to Indigenous people came not only from my personal spiritual resources. When allegations of Jesuit sexual abuse of Indigenous children first appeared in the late 1980s, we did not believe the victims, who then sued us. Indignant, we replied in kind, using the law as a weapon. But upon much reflection and discernment, we came to realize that we were treating old friends like enemies. Also, we started to notice patterns in the allegations, and we saw that records supported much of what we were hearing. As a result, we began to listen less judgmentally, to act less defensively, and to take the allegations more seriously. We eventually came to acknowledge the harm that our participation in the residential school system and contribution to colonization in general had done. And as we recognized our responsibility for that harm, we also sought to compensate for it.

The change in how we listened to Indigenous people and our admission that a colonizing attitude had shaped our evangelization thus allowed me to accept the shame and confusion that I felt during my first days as provincial as I realized how I triggered traumatic memories. Subsequent changes, especially a 2015 province-wide communal discernment about our priorities, then moved us further down this path of conversion and decolonization. No surprise, then, that the first priority to emerge from this process involved Ignatian spirituality. However, the second priority to emerge—relations with Indigenous people—did surprise us. Note that this did not mean ministry to Indigenous people but ministry with Indigenous people—especially Indigenous Catholics—along with the understanding that such partnership should influence all our ministries. This new priority developed from the insight that, throughout the history of the Jesuits in Canada, we were our best selves when in right relation with Indigenous people. At the end of this exercise, an Indigenous elder, who had been working with us for forty years, said, “At last, I feel recognized. At last, I feel like a friend.

It took many humiliations for us to move from a paternalistic attitude of service to one of partnership and mutual learning. Accompanying Indigenous people despite our feelings of shame and confusion—and their accompanying us despite their frustrations and disappointments—have gotten us this far. In Ignatian terms, the persistence has been for us a long Third Week grace. In short, we could not have stayed in these relationships without admitting that we had allowed colonization to affect our evangelization. This admission, moreover, could not have happened without the critical self-awareness that came with the faith-justice commitment of GC 32 and its desire to associate with marginalized people.

Of course, the Third Week leads to the Fourth Week, and so too in our relations with Indigenous people. Indeed, facing our truth has led to the new life of our own Jesuit transformation and to finding a pathway to God. Most importantly, our transformation—the beginning of our decolonization—has allowed us to see things we could not see when preoccupied with ourselves—above all, how we and Indigenous people can ally ourselves in a shared mission. Certainly, spirituality forms in the Indigenous culture the center of a good life and a healthy society, and Western cultures need this truth, which Indigenous people preach well. Furthermore, for Indigenous people, creation is central to true spirituality. Knowing this can help us promote integral ecological conversion and the truth that right relations with each other and with God must include right relations with creation. In this way, we are finding together a pathway to God in secularized and ecologically challenged societies.

APA

Bisson, J. P., S.J. (2025). Decree 4, truth, reconciliation, and Indigenous relations. Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 57(2), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20607

CMOS

Bisson, J. Peter, S.J. “Decree 4, Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Relations.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 57, no. 2 (2025): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20607.

MLA

Bisson, J. Peter, S.J. “Decree 4, Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Relations.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, vol. 57, no. 2, 2025, pp. 1–5. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20607.

Turabian

Bisson, J. Peter, S.J. “Decree 4, Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Relations.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 57, no. 2 (2025): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20607.