Firm launches class action lawsuit for residential school families

Families injured by Indigenous residential schools will seek restitution from Ottawa through a class-action lawsuit, says a Calgary legal firm.

Following similar action taken by survivors, the latest legal action is being filed by families that were traumatized by the institutions that sought to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children, most of whom were taken from their parents, said the Guardian Law Group.

“The claim is made on behalf of all family members, parents, and siblings of children that disappeared or died while attending a Residential School,” said a statement from the law group. “For those children whose deaths were wrongful, the families deserve compensation and justice.”

Even in cases of natural death, the federal government failed to inform the victims' families, memorialize their burial spots or keep proper records, the law group said.

Spearheading the action will be Violet and Floyd Good Eagle, a husband and wife of the Siksika Nation who attended separate residential schools in Alberta and both lost siblings at those institutions, said Guardian Law.

“In both cases ... when the parents asked about the whereabouts of their children, they were either informed that they had died or that they should not inquire further,” said the lawyers.

The suit is seeking damages in the range of $200 million.

That cruel lack of transparency was a pervasive problem and one that can only be addressed through a class action, said Guardian Law's Mathew Farrell, who has filed the claim in federal court.

About 150,000 students attended nearly 150 Indigenous residential schools from the mid-19th century until the late 1990s. Estimates of how many children died there reach 6,000.

The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said the schools, operated by the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian faiths at the behest of the federal government, subjected children to sexual and physical abuse, malnutrition, exposure and disease while attempting to destroy their cultural identity.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Last month, the Alberta government said it would earmark $8 million to research and help uncover unmarked burial sites located at former residential schools.

That decision came after ground penetrating radar located 215 bodies at an unmarked grave at a former residential school in Kamloops B.C. Hundreds of other unmarked graves have since been found in B.C. and Saskatchewan and many more are expected to be located.