WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.
When Phil Fontaine spoke decades ago about the sexual and physical abuse he suffered at Manitoba residential schools, he risked shame and shocked Canadians.
Fontaine, an Ojibway and former chief of the Sagkeeng First Nation, was one of the first Indigenous leaders to speak to the public about the physical and psychological abuse at Canada’s residential schools, during a ground-breaking 1990 interview with CBC’s Barbara Frum.
Now, 32 years later, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations is part of a 30-member delegation that will be at the Vatican starting on
