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VANCOUVER, Canada — Church
leaders in Canada say a supreme court ruling about compensation
to aboriginal students who suffered abuse at residential schools
operated on
behalf of the government, offers a chance for a lasting solution
to the issue.
The court
ruling was followed by the government issuing a sweeping plan to improve lives
of Canadian aborigines. Canada on Nov. 25 pledged $4.3 billion in a deal with
Indian and northern Inuit communities to help alleviate the poverty and disease
that has plagued their neglected reserves for more than a century and help
narrow the gap with the rest of the population.
Two days
earlier the government announced it was allocating $1.7 billion to be distributed
among about 86,000 students still living who attended the residential schools.
The moves
were preceded by a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in October that implicated
several Canadian churches and Roman Catholic entities. The supreme court upheld
a lower court decision which would require one of the denominations, the United
Church of Canada, to meet 25 per cent of damages awarded to students
who experienced sexual abuse at a native residential school.
The federal government would be responsible for the remaining
75 per cent.
About 15,000
former pupils had brought claims against the government and the Catholic, Anglican,
Presbyterian and United churches that ran the schools. These claims must now
be dropped as part of the deal announced on Nov. 23. It includes 60 million
Canadian dollars for a truth commission to promote awareness of what happened.
“I
hope that this will bring a just and lasting solution to this painful part
of our history for those who suffered either from abuse while they were there,
or from the policy of assimilation that the schools were meant to foster,” said
Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the leader of the Anglican Church of Canada, quoted
on the church’s Web site.
The Rev.
Stephen Kendall, the head of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, welcomed the
court settlement saying, “It will provide for former students of residential
schools several positive ways of having both their claims of abuse compensated,
and their
experience at the school acknowledged and commemorated.”
About 250,000
aboriginal children were enrolled in government residential and day schools
during the period 1820‑1969. More than 105,000 attended the 80 residential
schools run by the churches during the time at which the alleged abuse occurred. |
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