A14 EZ RE the washington post.tuesday, may 17 , 2022
BY AMANDA COLETTA
TORONTO — When Prince
Charles and his wife, Camilla,
arrive in Canada on Tuesday to
kick off a royal tour in celebration
of Queen Elizabeth II’s seven
decades on the throne, they’ll
find themselves confronting the
painful and enduring legacies of
British colonization and empire.
The pair, who begin their
three-day tour in Newfoundland
and Labrador, will take part in
what their itinerary describes as
a “solemn moment of reflection
and prayer” at a Heart Garden,
planted in memory of the thou-
sands of Indigenous children
who died at residential schools
and to honor survivors and their
families.
Canada is grappling with the
discovery over the past year of
evidence of unmarked graves on
or near the sites of the govern-
ment-funded, church-run
schools. Beginning in the 19th
century, Indigenous children in
many instances were taken force-
fully from their families to be
assimilated in boarding schools
where they were forbidden to
speak their native languages or
practice their culture. The last
residential school closed in the
1990s. Canada’s Truth and Rec-
onciliation Commission conclud-
ed in 2015 that the system
amounted to “cultural genocide.”
Charles and Camilla’s itiner-
ary, which will also take them to
Ottawa and the Northwest Terri-
tories, includes a prayer in Inuk-
titut, Mi’kmaq music, a feeding
the fire ceremony and visits to
Indigenous communities to learn
about efforts to preserve their
languages, in addition to more
standard royal tour fare, such as
ceremonies at the National War
Memorial in the capital.
“There are moments in this
tour that are traditional,” said
royal historian Carolyn Harris,
an instructor at the University of
Toronto. “But when we look at
the itinerary, we see it’s very
topical ... and filled with events
that are going to be relevant in
the 2020s.”
Clarence House has said the
tour will “highlight an emphasis
on learning from Indigenous peo-
ples.” But in a country where
demonstrators against the mis-
treatment of Indigenous people
have in recent years toppled stat-
ues of British monarchs — in-
cluding of Elizabeth and her
great-great-grandmother, Queen
Victoria — some want more than
listening.
“It was the whole colonial
power structure that was respon-
sible for the residential school
system,” said Grand Chief Stew-
art Phillip, president of the
Union of British Columbia Indian
Chiefs. “I think they should defi-
nitely apologize.”
Cassidy Caron, president of the
Métis National Council, said the
Anglican Church ran early resi-
dential schools while Canada was
a British colony. If she meets
Charles at an engagement she’s
attending in Ottawa, she plans to
tell him that the queen, who is
head of the Church of England,
the mother church of Anglican-
ism worldwide, should listen to
survivors and acknowledge the
harm done to them.
“The queen definitely has a
role to play in reconciliation,”
Caron said. “If it starts with an
apology, that’s wonderful.”
The visit comes at a complicat-
ed time for the royal family, with
Elizabeth, 96, in the twilight of
her reign and several royal head-
aches — foreign and domestic —
threatening to cast a shadow over
the celebrations to mark her
platinum jubilee.
Prince Harry, who stepped
back from royal duties last year,
plans to release an “intimate”
memoir this year. In an interview
with Oprah Winfrey, the queen’s
grandson and his biracial wife,
Meghan, said an unnamed mem-
ber of the royal family had asked
questions about their unborn
child’s skin color.
Elizabeth’s second son, Prince
Andrew, settled a sexual abuse
lawsuit in February that was
brought by a woman who alleges
she was trafficked to him by
financier Jeffrey Epstein and
forced to him sex with him,
including two decades ago, when
she was 17.
In November, Barbados be-came the first commonwealth
realm in nearly three decades to
ditch the queen as its head of
state and declare itself a republic,
providing potential inspiration
to the 15 remaining realms, par-
ticularly those in the Caribbean,
amid a broader reckoning over
colonialism spurred in part by
the Black Lives Matter move-
ment.
During at-times rocky royal
tours to the Caribbean this year,
family members faced calls for
apologies and reparations for the
slave trade, and photos of the
royals echoed an imperial past in
what critics said was cringewor-
thy and out of touch.
Jamaican Prime Minister An-
drew Holness told Prince Wil-
liam, the queen’s grandson, and
his wife, Catherine, in March that
the island nation would at some
point be “moving on.” Their tourdrew protests at several stops.
When Prince Edward, the
queen’s third son, and his wife,
Sophie, visited Antigua and Bar-
buda in April, the country’s
prime minister told them that it
aspires “at some point to become
a republic” — even if it’s “not in
the cards” right now.
The visits have raised ques-
tions about the monarchy’s place
in the commonwealth and about
whether royal tours still makesense or should be reimagined.
Harris said Canada has gener-
ally been a “friendly” destination
for royals. But while the queen
still commands respect in the
country, even among non-monar-
chists, Charles, her first son and
heir to the throne, is less popular.
Polls here show declining sup-
port for the country remaining a
constitutional monarchy, partic-
ularly under the reign of Charles
as a king. But severing those tieswould be a complex process,
requiring a constitutional
amendment backed by both
houses of Parliament and all 10
provincial legislatures.
“It seems unlikely that a politi-
cian would choose to stake their
career on the issue of reopening
the constitution to transition
from a monarchy to a republic,”
Harris said. “What’s more likely
over the course of the 21st cen-
tury is that we simply have less
visibility for the royal family.”
Such a move could also require
reworking or reopening treaties
between the Crown and Indig-
enous people.
The royals have met with In-
digenous leaders here during
their many visits to Canada.
In 1970, during a 10-day tour,
an Indigenous leader welcomed
Elizabeth by noting that in the
century since his forefathers
signed treaties with Queen Victo-
ria, “the promises of peace and
harmony, of social advancement
and equality of opportunity, have
not been realized by our people.”
“We are hopeful that Your
Majesty’s representatives will
now ... recognize the inequities of
the past and take steps to redress
the treatment of the Indian peo-
ple of Manitoba,” said David
Courchene of the Manitoba Indi-
an Brotherhood.
During a royal visit in 2017 to
mark the sesquicentennial of Ca-
nadian confederation, Charles
and Camilla drew criticism for
bursting into laughter during a
performance by Inuit singers.
Large crowds greeted William
and Kate during their Canadian
tour in 2016 — billed as one that
would “help celebrate Canada’s
First Nations communities.” But
several prominent Indigenous
leaders snubbed invitations to a
reconciliation ceremony in Victo-
ria, British Columbia — a provin-
cial capital named after the Brit-
ish monarch.
Phillip, the grand chief, was
among them. He said such tours
tend to “whitewash the brutality
of the colonial experience with
Indigenous people.”
“In my view, these are just
grandiose photo ops,” he said.
“They’re trying to make them-
selves look good, and there’s no
substance to the statements they
make. There’s no effort to make it
right.”Royal visit for Canada as school-graves reckoning persists
Neil Hall/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Toby Melville/Reuters
Charles and Camilla’s
tour includes
Indigenous eventsABOVE: Prince Charles and
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall,
in London last week. The
British royals start a Canadian
tour on Tuesday.
RIGHT: Prince William and
Catherine, Duchess of
Cambridge, in Jamaica on
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