Settlement small step in reconciliation

by Fiona Joy Green and Jaqueline McLeod Rogers

A settlement of $10,000 in a class-action law suit involving hundreds of people left out of residential school compensation is to be paid by the Canadian Federal Government to each “day scholar” who attended residential schools during the day and returning home each night.

The Federal Government is also providing a $50 million into a Day Scholars Revitalization Fund to address additional harms and pain suffered by the students at the school. This is one small step forward in attending to reconciliation, which has taken the Canadian Government 14 years to take responsibility for the inhuman treatment of day students / scholars and to provide compensation.

Systemic racism is based in systemic white supremacy and must end. The way forward has been provided by the 94 CALLS to ACTION by the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada. The Government and Canadian citizens need to genuinely respond.