Suit filed for residential school abuses
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www.frostys.qc.ca fro...@kahonwes.com
Suit filed for residential school abuses If successful, joint action could cost government more than $12 Billion.
Richard Foot CanWest New Service Friday, August 01, 2003 Nineteen law firms across Canada have jointly filed details of a cl*** action lawsuit aimed at compensating more than a quarter of a million aboriginal people for the alleged harms of Indian residential schools.
The lawsuit includes at least 58,000 surviving, former students believed to have attended residential school between 1920 and 1996, and 250,000 parents and children of former students.
British Columbia and Ontario are home to the largest number of surviving students, with 10,000 in each province. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are home to roughly 8,000 each.
Although Thomson Rogers, the Toronto law firm leading the action, announced the lawsuit against the federal government last October, hundreds of pages of documents proposing how the matter should proceed were filed this week in Ontario Superior Court.
If certified by a judge, the lawsuit has the potential to become a comprehensive solution to the thousands of individual claims now working their way through Canadian courts. Its authors also call it an alternative to the federal government's newly announced plan for an out-of-court program to compensate only victims of physical and sexual abuse.
"There is now a clear alternative on the table to the government's program," says Jon Faulds, an Alberta lawyer who is part of the cl*** action.
Documents filed this week propose compensating every living former student, as well as the estates of certain dead ones, up to $40,000 each depending on how many years they spent in residential school.
It also proposes special damages for students who can prove they were physically or sexually abused, plus additional compensation of up to $20,000 per person for loss of native culture and language -- a category of harm the courts have not yet recognized.
Parents and children of former students also deserve up to $5,000 each, the lawsuit says.
Although a total dollar figure is not included in the documents, there have been estimates that a successful cl*** action could cost the federal government more than $12 billion in damages.
The federal government owned hundreds of residential schools across Canada through most of the 20th century as part of a national policy aimed at educating and ***imilating 91,000 aboriginal children. There was physical and sexual abuse in certain schools, and dozens of former students have successfully sued the government and the various churches that helped operate the schools, for the abuses some students suffered at the hands of convicted supervisors and teachers.
Charles Baxter, the cl*** action's representative claimant, is a 52-year-old band councillor from the Constance Lake First Nation in Ontario, who claims he was beaten and sexually abused at the Pelican Falls Residential School from age seven.
Some involved with the schools have said that beyond the criminal abuses, the system taught Canada's aboriginals how to read and write, and was operated with the consent of many native parents.
However, many plaintiffs claim they were forcibly taken from their parents and unwillingly immersed in hard-hearted institutions that forbade them to speak or practise native languages and customs.
?© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen
Sunsite suns...@firetrick.net
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 13:58:54 -0400, www.frostys.qc.ca There have been BIA residential schools in America, but the issues in Canada seem to be much more intense. The ones here appear to have been run directly by the Federal government while the Canadian schools were managed primarily by the Catholic and Anglican churches. Any specifics about differences between the Canadian and American residential school systems for indigenous people? I've seen many horror stories from Canada, which always impressed me as a progressive country, but not nearly so much negative about American residential schools for Indians.
man_in_black ...@yahoo.com (MIB529)
Sees it already: Steve says it's okay because children need sex, and Blowjack says it's okay because Indians aren't really people.
www.frostys.qc.ca fro...@kahonwes.com
Boy are the lawyers going make a killing if this case is ever won...
Steve and BorJeck should contact the lawyers and get jobs.
man_in_black ...@yahoo.com (MIB529)
If you've been paying attention to Brojack***'s alt.education and alt.parenting posts, you'll know who Steve is. Were he not so delusional, I'd think he was only 14. LOL So, wanna bet I'm right about the thread?
lisa_dil ...@hotmail.com (lisa dillon)
Just Think of the Ties Sold to those Lawyers! Lady Lawyers?
hahhhhhh,they don't buy there own Ties! Shoes! Oh those shoes!
Now,maybe they will put um all together when the dust settles and the moneys spent and gone! you know!!!??? The MONEY FOR THE ABUSED!!!
maybe put those Ties and Shoes to fantastic USE! Create a back to work donation&pick Up Stations of those never worn more than kine etc....Oh my,run in those heals! Sure! just don't weir the Tie to tight.
I know it might just sund goofy,to be lite on such a serious ISSUE!!!!
That is only to spare energy back and hope focus falls back to US Remembering OR Learning for the first time....Lisa D....
www.frostys.qc.ca fro...@kahonwes.com
Don't get me going I just had a great game of golf and I don't want wreck it.
www.frostys.qc.ca fro...@kahonwes.com
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 13:58:54 -0400, www.frostys.qc.ca Oh just something I came across that might be of interesting to some.
This sort of what I read and how I can best explain it.
Did you know that it was not until 1978 that the United States p***ed what is called Indian Child Welfare Act. O better known as the ICWA.
That the Congress did an investigated on what many believe was a national disgrace. They found out that about one third of all native children were being removed from there parents and from the reservations. Many put up for adoption by non native families. Many with out records of where they were sent and the new parents had no idea where these children came from. So they lost everything unless the adopted parents told them they were Indians.
This investigation found the removal to be destructive to indian families, children and the community.
They also found the only reason to remove the children was that they were Indians or Poor. That some indian agent or someone would just pluck these children off at will. That the tribal government for the most part had little to say or could do nothing to protect the children before or after they were removed It was also found that the adoption rate was eight time that of non native children. In fact this was depleting the youth from reservation at an alarming rate.
Just on more example of the ***imilation process in the name of progress by the United States before someone noticed and stopped it.
Just my opinion Ron Deere AKA Frosty I do not have a copy of the Act, and sorry I can not share it with you.
King_A ...@hotmail.com (King Amdo)
Good luck.
Om Shiva.
King Amdo.
etc
snows ...@xyz.net (Jan Flora)
The latest newsletter from Amnesty International has an article about a Lakota gal initiating a cl***-action suit against the US feds for abuses in the Indian schools here in the states. I'm not NA, but have many friends who were taken from their families and forced to attend those schools.
The abuse that my friends suffered curls my toenails. Lye-soaped mouths for speaking their own language is the least of it. Getting rented out to whites as maids & cooks, then getting routinely raped by the men in the family is a common thread in the stories of the women. Many Indian kids in the American schools *starved to death* because the BIA wouldn't give the schools enough money to feed the kids.
A cl***-action lawsuit can't replace dead kids, lost childhoods, lost languages, cultures, traditions and broken families. But most whites only understand money, so taking their money makes them pay attention. So I hope the Indians get *all* of their dirty money. I don't have to be an Indian to be totally pissed off about child abuse.
Jan
Gringo gringoNO-S...@firetrick.net
I've heard and read a lot about these experiences in Canada - many news accounts and lawsuits - but I've never seen much about instances in the US. Life in the US schools is detailed in terms of gardens, workshops, cl***es, and musical bands, but I haven't seen much that parallels the Canadian accounts. Those uncivilized Canadians - of course nothing like that could happen in America, eh?
My own childhood and adolescence was lousy - even wound up with a bleeding peptic ulcer requring transfusions in the middle of my senior high school year - but it was positively nothing like these accounts I read. In view of my lightweight experiences, it totally horrifies me.
www.frostys.qc.ca fro...@kahonwes.com
Want to learn more check this out do a SEARCH for "Residential School Survivors" a lot of stuff to read if you have the time.
Gringo gringoNO-S...@firetrick.net
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 17:57:35 -0400, www.frostys.qc.ca Am supposedly working at the moment, so I don't have time to get thorough, but you're right, there are many articles with that search.
I just tried it. Having a news reader on a work computer can be a major distraction :^) These articles are all about Canada, but I tentatively jump to the conclusion that the American experience may have been similar.
'Although children were in the boarding situation for 10 months of the year, many did not return home for holidays for a number of reasons.
This resulted in total alienation from family and community.
"Residential School Syndrome" effects include: lack of parenting skills loss of language and culture inability to communicate and articulate feelings addictions, including alcohol and drugs gambling family violence and cycles of abuse'
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