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	Ex-Residential School Students May Sue Ottawa By Rod Nickel Leader-Post March 25, 2008 http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=9763ff09-aa86-4a5d-a219-4cfda5465793 SASKATOON — Former students of two northern residential schools may take legal action against Ottawa, after a federal department refused to add the Ile a la Crosse boarding school to a list of schools covered by a settlement. Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada posted online March 14 an updated list of decisions about hundreds of Canadian Indian schools applying for compensation. The Ile a la Crosse school will not be added because it was operated by a religious organization, not the federal government, according to the department. Other Saskatchewan schools have been rejected if they didn't house students overnight or if the province operated the school. Decisions on dozens of other Saskatchewan schools are pending. Don Favel, 58, who spent seven years in the Ile a la Crosse school beginning in the mid-1950s, said the residents want to take legal action against both Ottawa and the Catholic church. Favel says he experienced physical and sexual abuse at the school. The impact of the residential school experience continues to be felt because some survivors didn't develop good parenting skills due to separation from their families. "If the church is solely responsible (for running the school), we'll go after the church," he said. "We're going to go after somebody. There's a very strong possibility we'll also go after Ottawa." Favel says had the decision to deny Ile a la Crosse been better publicized, it might have affected the outcome of the March 17 Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River byelection, which Conservative Rob Clarke won. Favel claims Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised students of the boarding school fair compensation in a January 2006 interview with Missinippi Broadcasting Corporation. Former students at Charlebois School in Cumberland House have held off applying for compensation, pending the Ile a la Crosse decision, because both schools were run by church organizations. Now Chief John Dorion of John Cochrane First Nation says the band may join a class action lawsuit against Ottawa, even though Charlebois was a day school. Students of both schools should be compensated for abuse, Dorion said. "The experience was the same (everywhere)," he said in an interview. "There was a lot of abuse. When I went to school, I got strapped for speaking Cree." The North's newly elected MP, Rob Clarke, said he needs to be briefed on concerns of residential school students excluded from the settlement. But Clarke, who is First Nations, said he'll be a "stronger voice" for them "My grandmother came from a residential school system and I know the frustration that the residential school students face today and from the past. I do carry a heavy heart when I hear what took place."
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