When Pope Francis arrives in Canada and is expected to beg forgiveness for Catholic-run residential schools, a team of translators will be dedicated to making sure no words are lost for those receiving the apology.
Henry Pitawanakwat, from the Three Fires Confederacy of Manitoulin Island in Ontario, is on that team and will translate the Pope's words into the Ojibwa language.
His mother was a residential school survivor, which he says also impacted him, and as a youth, he also suffered abuse from members of the Jesuits.
Still, he says it's important to him not to let his own feelings get in the way as he translates the Pope's words into a language children were once punished for using.
From the late 1800s until 1996, Canada removed Indigenous children from their homes and forced them into institutions run by church staff where they were forbidden from speaking their language.
An archeologist at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, Pitawanakwat is a member of the Translation Bureau with the Government of Canada and has translated the federal election debates in 2019 and 2021 and also recently for an A-P-T-N series.
Francis, who is from Argentina, speaks Spanish, so Pitawanakwat says another interpreter will translate what the Pope says into English before he and other interpreters translate those words into a dozen Indigenous languages.
Web links for each language will then be available for people to listen to the translations in real-time.
