Canada forms organization to support Indian residential day school survivors

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) - A new organization will oversee the distribution of CAN$200 million to former day students of Canada's notorious federal Indian residential schools, it was announced Thursday.

The McLean Day School Settlement Corporation will administer the funds. The organization is named after the late Garry McLean, who filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of an estimated 200,000 survivors.

They were not part of the CAN$1.47 billion settlement reached in 2006 with those who were forced to board at the 139 schools, the first of which began operating in the 1820s, with the last one closing in 1990. The government reached the CAN$200 million settlement with the day school survivors in 2019. The day school system began in the 1920s.

Claudette Commanda, a member of the new McLean corporation board and an Algonquin Anishinabe from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community in Quebec, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that while the day school students were not forced to board at the schools -- she is a survivor -- they did suffer abuse.

"We did go home to our families after school, but there was still abuses that went on," she said. "We were not allowed to speak our language in those schools. We were not allowed to even know anything about who we are as Anishinabe people."

Commanda said the money will be key in helping survivors deal with the day-school legacy.

“Now that the conversation on the legacy of colonialism and impact of residential schools in Canada has been renewed, it is vital that survivors of Indian day schools are not forgotten,” she said in a statement, as reported by Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) News.

“We are hopeful now that with the leadership of our board and the perspectives of day schools' survivors, the legacy fund will create positive pathways for healing and help restore language, culture, wellness, commemoration and truth-telling.”

There are to date 118,950 applicants who have applied for funds, APTN reported.