As observers of the continued sex abuse scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church and their Jesuit orders, the focus of UNM is on the Native American victims. In particular, it was active government AND church policy that for over 200 years-- aimed to "kill the savage, and save the man."
It is the view of UNM editorial that expansion of the litigation is needed to address the attached practice of cultural genocide that was the underlying foundation of these dual church/government policies that was an enemy force against native tribal people for over two hundred years. The concept can be viewed in questions of "wholeness" that the legal system is intended to restore. We must then ask ourselves, whose wholeness? There are two classes of victims, the tribe and the individual abuse victim.
It does not appear the Church has any intention of paying the damages of cultural genocide, the systemic wiping out of languages, culture loss, family disintegration and disruption, the disruption of traditional life patterns, subsistence economy that was dependent upon the family unit remaining cohesive, and the profound loss of knowledge about traditional life ways of every tribe and band impacted by these protracted, brutal, inhumane and humiliating policies. There has been a high human and social costs of mis-education. This is the church side of the assimilation equation.
The Catholic Church is one body whose practices of forced indoctrination is overripe for the full force of legal scrutiny, and it about time this occurs. How do you quantify losses like these, at the heart of the matter, certainly the church should be paying for cultural programs to restore tribes, and to give some sense of restoration to the individual victims. The lawsuit must be expanded to address cultural genocide of the tribes. It is worth noting, the Jesuits are the educated religious elite of the Catholic Church; there is a higher standard and duty of care they should be held to.
Money alone does not make and will not make the individual victims whole, there is a need for the tribal cultures to flourish, but there is also a spiritual component to the disturbing level of violation when one is raped, molested and victimized by a religious authority/clergy. Male members of the CSKT tribes speak of being raped by a nun from the Ursuline order. I do not see the church paying to ensure the spiritual wounds of these victims are healed; and to what extent is the church working with the traditional leaders, traditional societies, tribal faith based organizations, and community wellness groups of tribes to ensure these spiritual wounds are healed?
There is no wholeness for the victims whose lives remain forever shattered, if they can never find the spiritual peace within themselves. How do these victims ever regain trust when there has been a profound violation of not only their bodies, and the psychic injuries that goes with that--and add on the distrust of religion, and the shattering of their spirituality? Has the church been held to account for this? The legal system seems to be giving the church and its educated elite a free pass at the moment, and tribes should not allow this.
As the bankrupt Jesuit order, the Society of Jesus-Oregon Province has been accused of dumping problem priests in remote villages and Indian reservations, this also creates the need for tribes to protect their members and their children from sexual predators: as victim Frances Burke stated he couldn't wait to see an earthquake take down the St. Ignatious Mission. My question is: why wait? Tribes are sovereign bodies, and our traditions are what makes us unique as tribes. The tribes have a moral imperative to padlock churches that abuse their place on reservations, and if we value our status as first indigenous nations as pre-existing civilizations--tribes have the power to drive the churches from their borders all together.
Finally, many state statutes of limitations protect church sexual predators, the state is still complicit in favoring one religion and providing a get out of jail free passes to known predators. Tribes can and should ask for automatic life sentences of church sex predators, and pedophiles, and this should be a federal law, applicable in every state.
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