Long Inuit wait ends Friday
Prime Minister to apologize to residential school survivors left out of compensation
Jimmy Tuttauk was working on the remote coast of northern Labrador when he first heard that Ottawa was settling with former students of residential schools.
It was 2007 and he was listening to a radio news report that sent his heart soaring — until he realized the awful truth.
“My God, how could they have left us out?” Tuttauk recalled thinking as it became clear Aboriginal children who suffered in similar dorms and classrooms in Labrador and northern Newfoundland were excluded.
“It was never about the compensation,” he said of the decade-long legal odyssey that followed. That traumatic journey, fraught with nightmares of abuse that never fully fade, culminates Friday with what Tuttauk and so many others have longed for: an official apology.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is to attend a ceremony in Goose Bay, including Inuit singers and drummers, that’s expected to draw more than 300 people.
Tuttauk, 57, will be there. “Mean, nasty things happened to little children under the government’s watch,” he said from his home in the Inuit community of Hopedale.
“It was about the apology and finally being recognized that we weren’t lying all these years.”
The previous Conservative government argued Ottawa was not responsible for schools in North West River, Cartwright, Nain and Makkovik — all in Labrador — or in St. Anthony in northern Newfoundland. The International Grenfell Association ran three of the schools, while the Germany-based Moravian Missionaries ran the other two.
They were left out of thenprime minister Stephen Harper’s apology in the House of Commons in 2008. Nor were they eligible for a related compensation deal that has paid out more than $4 billion to those who attended residential schools across the rest of Canada.
Lawyers for more than 800 plaintiffs countered that, after Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949, Ottawa had the same legal duty to Aboriginal students in the province.
The Liberal government offered a $50-million package last year to settle claims of sexual and physical abuse along with loss of language and culture.
Students who lived in school residences for less than five years were eligible for $15,000 in general compensation while those who lived there five years or more could receive $20,000.
Compensation for sexual or significant physical abuse up to about $200,000 was based on sworn testimony.
More than 120 members of the class action died waiting for a resolution.
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Steven Cooper said 960 former students or their estates have received payments. Of those, around 120 were eligible for higher amounts for the worst abuse.
“We’ve certainly asked the prime minister to be sensitive to the fact that there was a large group of people who suffered similarly before Newfoundland joined Confederation.”