Thank you for such a clearly articulated summary of the situation. After falling in love with, "Child of the Government," a song and original short film by indigenous Canadian Jayli Wolf, I've paid close attention to these issues. I started paying even more attention when I learned that the United States has its own residential indigenous school problem that we haven't even begun to address yet.

So when the Pope announced he was traveling to Canada, I had a lot of hope that wrongs would finally start to be righted. I was pretty shocked. I followed coverage of his speech live through my Washington Post account, and was pretty surprised to learn that he was apologizing for individual people but not for the institution of the Church. It was my understanding that this was indigenous leaders' primary objection during their April visit to the Vatican — and that he had committed to doing better.

Evidently not.

I'm sad to see this failure getting very little attention in the press. The Post mentioned the problem, but the Guardian and the New York Times did not.

America Magazine, a Jesuit publication, mentioned that indigenous leaders want the Pope to apologize for the Church and not for individual people, but they didn't explain why in the manner you just did.

Almost nobody is explaining why, at least in mainstream publications that I read, and that's highly disappointing.