Aboriginals who have been denied compensation for their time at Canada's notorious residential schools because they continued to live at home filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday, arguing they, too, were scarred by a system designed to eradicate their language and culture.
The Tk'eml脙潞ps te Secw脙漏pemc Indian Band in Kamloops and the Sechelt Indian Band filed a statement of claim in Federal Court in a case they hope grows to include aboriginals from across the country.
The federal government reached a settlement to compensate residential school students in 2006, two years before Prime Minister Stephen Harper's historic apology in Parliament. But an automatic payment to former residential school students - described as a common experience payment - only applied to those who lived at the schools.
Students who attended the schools during the day and returned home at night, a group referred to as "day scholars," aren't eligible for those payments, which provide $10,000 for the first year spent living at a residential school and $3,000 for each subsequent year.
The class-action lawsuit argues day scholars should also be compensated for the cultural and psychological damage wrought by the schools.
The residential schools settlement also provides for payments for specific, individual allegations of abuse by former residential students. Day scholars who suffered such abuse are eligible for those payments, each determined on a case-by-case basis.
The class-action suit seeks compensation for day scholars, their descendants and the two bands. It does not specify how much compensation they are seeking.
