CANADA
The Chronicle Herald
By JENNIFER STEWART Staff Reporter and The Canadian Press
It is difficult to put a dollar amount on the abuse and cultural genocide thousands of native children suffered at residential schools across Canada, survivor Noel Knockwood said Wednesday in Dartmouth.
The 73-year-old is a former student at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia. He said the more than $2 billion in payments and healing programs the federal government is proposing for survivors isn’t enough, but it’s a start.
"It’s pretty difficult to measure a cultural loss and it is rather hard to put a dollar figure on any kind of an issue such as that," Mr. Knockwood said. "Regardless, it’s a start and it might be the beginning of something a little bit better."
The settlement, announced in Ottawa on Wednesday, has yet to be approved in court, but if it is, the survivors of rapes, beatings and cultural isolation would likely be paid by the end of next year. Most survivors now average 60 years old and many are sick or dying.