Prince Charles and Camilla will ‘listen and learn’ from indigenous communities on Canada tour

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are to put indigenous communities at the heart of their upcoming Canadian tour as they emphasise “listening” in the wake of recent controversial royal visits.

The Prince and Duchess are expected to acknowledge the treatment of indigenous people in Canada’s residential schools during their three-day tour next month, with an expressed wish to “learn from” communities.

The trip is the latest of the Royal family’s overseas tours to the Queen’s realms as part of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations and follows visits to the Caribbean from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Earl and Countess of Wessex which were heavily criticised in some quarters.

Announcing details of the tour, senior aides to the Prince emphasised his long ties with indigenous communities and the couple’s hope to “meet with, listen to and celebrate with Canadians from coast to coast to coast”.

Within hours of landing in the Commonwealth country, the couple will take part in a “solemn moment of reflection and prayer” in a garden dedicated to indigenous victims of the school system which saw thousands of children abused.

“Throughout the tour, Their Royal Highnesses will take the opportunity to continue to engage with indigenous communities,” said Chris Fitzgerald, the Prince’s deputy private secretary.

“Over five decades, His Royal Highness continues to learn from indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world.

“He recognises their deep ties to the land and water and the critical traditional knowledge they hold to restore harmony between people and nature.”

During the visit, which was at the invitation of the Canadian government, the Prince and Duchess will also hail the country’s response to refugees and meet members of Canada’s Ukrainian community, the largest outside Europe.

As part of his work campaigning to solve climate change, the Prince will visit an “ice road” which connects the community of Dettah with Yellowknife, the capital city of the Northwest Territories.

Global warming is causing it to thaw earlier each year, turning a 20-minute trip into a two-and-a-half-hour journey along an alternative route.

The Duchess will spend time at a safe house for survivors of domestic violence, visit a pioneering children’s literacy programme and hear of action to preserve indigenous languages.

Mr Fitzgerald said: “To celebrate the Queen’s outstanding example of service over seven decades, Their Royal Highnesses are particularly looking forward to meeting some of the many Canadians who have served in their communities over the years and most recently through the pandemic.”

The tour runs from May 17 to 19, travelling 2,000 miles from Newfoundland and Labrador, to Ottawa and then the Northwest Territories.

Highlights of the visit will also see the couple tour the family-run Quidi Vidi Brewery famous for its “iceberg” beer made from 20,000-year-old water harvested from icebergs which migrate seasonally to Newfoundland.

It is the Prince’s 19th visit to Canada following his first official tour in 1970, and the Duchess’s fifth.

It will be the first time they have visited since the discovery last year of hundreds of human remains in unmarked graves at former church-run schools, where indigenous children were forcibly relocated for generations.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society, with thousands now known to have died.

The Canadian government has acknowledged that physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages.

Royal acknowledgement of the scandal will be seen as a significant gesture, with critics of the Royal family poised to find fault with the tour in the wake of recent Caribbean trips.

Trips by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Earl and Countess of Wessex have both faced criticism from campaigners seeking reparations for slavery and outright calls for their nations to become republics.