CANADA
Indian Country Today Media Network
By David P. Ball
August 18, 2012
A historic class action lawsuit by people who attended Indian Residential Schools as “day scholars” has begun to spread across Canada, bringing the total to 76 bands alleging widespread abuse.
Only a day after British Columbia’s Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and Sechelt First Nations filed their case against the federal government on behalf of survivors and their descendents who were excluded from full compensation under a 2006 abuse settlement, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) added its name to the lawsuit.
“The Indian Day Scholar survivors suffered the same injustices as the Indian Residential School survivors,” said FSIN Vice Chief Dutch Lerat in a statement. “Many of them suffered abuse and a loss of language and culture. We estimate there are more than 4,000 Indian Day Scholar survivors in Saskatchewan waiting for past wrongs to be righted.”
Representing 74 First Nations in the prairie province, the Saskatchewan group’s addition suggests that many more could join the case against Canada’s nearly 160 Residential Schools, which operated from the 1870s through 1996.
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