Deal ‘first steps in justice,’ say survivors of Sask. boarding school

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Survivors of a boarding school that housed Metis and First Nations children in Saskatchewan say an agreement in principle with the Canadian government does not erase the horrors and mistreatments they witnessed or experienced.

The Ile-a-la-Crosse Boarding School Steering Committee says the settlement would see up to $27 million paid to survivors. It would also see a fund of $10 million set up for projects that address healing, education, language and culture.

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The committee had filed a lawsuit against Ottawa and the Saskatchewan government for the roles they played in operating the school and for allegedly breaching legal duties to care for the children.

Survivors say they suffered abuse while attending the school, which operated for more than 100 years until it burned down in the 1970s.

School survivor, committee member and elder Antoinette LaFleur said she was barely five years old when she began at the school. That, LaFleur said, “was 76 years (ago) … took me that long to hear what I heard today.”

Collectively, committee members acknowledged that no amount of money could ever erase the injustices committed or the time it’s taken to acknowledge what happened.

“We’re losing the survivors at a rapid pace and so we just feel that it’s time to at least honour some of our survivors and look after them the way we should be looking after them and respect that,” boarding school survivor and steering committee member Louis Gardiner said.

“I guess based on that,” he added, “we find this one of the first steps in justice … in healing for us.”

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The steering committee in a statement called the tentative agreement “a historic step on the journey to justice and reconciliation for the school survivors.

“While the (school) survivors will likely always be haunted by their years of physical, mental and sexual abuse at the hands of school operators, they agree they can take some comfort in this acknowledgment, know their truth is finally being believed and move on.”

The steering committee said it is working on drafting a final agreement. It added that claims of physical or sexual abuse aren’t included in the agreement, and that survivors can pursue those issues in the courts.

LaFleur said it is disappointing such abuses aren’t acknowledged in the agreement.

“(The Canadian government) knows what we went through and yet not giving us what we were supposed to get,” LaFleur said.

Ile-a-la-Crosse residential school, also known as Ile-a-la-Crosse boarding school or mission school, was one of the oldest residential schools in Canada, operating from the 1820s until 1976. Approximately 1,500 students, most of whom were Metis children from northern Saskatchewan, attended the school over those years.

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For more than a century, children suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse by staff at the institution. Many of the children were removed from their homes and forced to assimilate. Many were well under the age of 10, forbidden to see brothers and sisters attending the same school, prevented from speaking their native tongue, and coerced into learning English.

In January 2023, after years of failed negotiation attempts, survivors launched a proposed class-action lawsuit against the governments of Canada and Saskatchewan to get compensation that other residential school survivors have been awarded. It’s the second class-action attempted, with one begun in 2005 having stalled out over the ensuing years.

The school was not included in the list of residential schools for survivor compensation under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement of 2006.

“We went through hell just to get an education. We went through abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse and loneliness just to get an education,” survivor and elder Emile Janvier said.

Metis Nation-Saskatchewan vice-president Michelle LeClair said there won’t be true reconciliation or justice until the province fulfils its obligations on the file.

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“After such a tumultuous journey, at least Canada has stepped forward with something. We’re relieved for our survivors and hope they can at least start the healing process,” she said.

The federal and Saskatchewan governments did not immediately provide a comment.

Saskatchewan NDP First Nations and Metis Affairs critic Leroy Laliberte called the settlement between the committee and the federal government “an important step toward justice,” but said “true reconciliation requires the province to take responsibility as well.

“This is about recognition and justice. The Saskatchewan government must do its part.”

— With Saskatoon StarPhoenix files

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