Donald Brenner, chief justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, issued a ruling in early July directing the Canadian government to pay 75 percent of the damages awarded to six Native plaintiffs who were sexually abused as children at the Alberni Indian Residential School on Vancouver Island. The other 25 percent will be borne by the United Church of Canada, which operated the school as Ottawa's agent. The awards in this case ranged from $10,000 to $145,000.

During the 1990s, nearly 8,000 former students at the Native residential schools filed lawsuits, charging sexual and physical abuse, physical deprivation, and loss of culture. Exposing how the Canadian government used every means possible to obliterate Native culture and force Natives to become a low-wage, super-exploited sector of the working class has been one of the major Native rights fights in Canada over the past decade.

Ottawa built and owned the residential schools and asked the churches--Catholic, Anglican, United, and Presbyterian--to operate them until it took back their operation in 1969. The last of the schools were only phased out in the 1980s. The lawsuits name both the federal government and the churches as defendants. Estimates of the final tab in the resolution of the claims, either through negotiation or court decisions, have run as high as Can$2 billion (Can$1 = US 65 cents).

In his decision, the judge said that Ottawa hired the school principal, controlled its finances, set the teachers' wages, selected the students, "and continued to be responsible for their well-being...that responsibility was non-delegable."

This court decision is the second on the issue as Ottawa has pursued a delaying strategy of fighting against assuming responsibility for the widespread abuses. In an earlier British Columbia court case, the judge ruled that the Anglican Church, one of the defendants in that case, must pay 60 percent of the judgment and the government 40 percent. The government has tried to deflect the blame and liability for damages onto the churches.

In 1998, Ottawa launched the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) program with 12 ADR pilot projects, supposedly to see if settlements could be reached more quickly and with fewer legal costs through negotiations. Of the 12 projects over three years, only one has produced a token result--nine cases out of 100 claims settled at one Arctic school. Meanwhile, the government has spent millions in legal fees and administrative costs and continues to insist that the churches absorb 50 percent of responsibility and liability.

A group of Anglican churches in the Diocese of Cariboo in British Columbia plans to declare bankruptcy October 15 as a result of the legal claims. Canada's three largest Christian churches--United, Roman Catholic, and Anglican--say the legal actions are pushing them towards bankruptcy. The United Church paid $2.3 million in court and lawyers costs last year.  
 
Government responsibility
The entire program was initiated, funded, and governed by Ottawa. In 1892, the Canadian government passed an order-in-council regulating the operation of Indian residential schools, some of which had been in operation since the mid-1800s. It set up the partnership to hand operation over to the churches.

The aim was forcible assimilation by removing children from the influence, culture, and language, not to speak of love and care, of their parents and elders. There were more than 130 schools, and some 105,000 children spent their early years in them.

Children were often abducted to attend the schools. Bill Morris recalls the day in 1955 when he was removed from his home at Bearskin Lake in northern Ontario. He heard what sounded like a huge bumblebee. When it stopped, he saw a crowd at the docks. "I was a nosy kid so I headed through the crowd. The next thing I know someone grabbed me and threw me into this plane. There were about 12 of us in there."

The students were often beaten if they tried to speak their own language. They were easy prey for sexual abusers and brutal teachers. Malnutrition and disease were common in the schools. Documents in the National Archives in Ottawa reveal that Ottawa denied basic dental care and Vitamin C to some Native children in controlled experiments in the 1940s and early '50s. Unpasteurized milk was sometimes used even though use of pasteurized milk was mandatory in institutions at the time, and tuberculosis was not uncommon.

A 1952 federal government survey found that "ten people employed as teachers claimed no formal education beyond Grade 8." A 1948 Department of Indian Affairs study on the qualifications of teachers in the schools showed that 40 percent had no professional training.

Ben Pratt, who attended a residential school in Saskatchewan, was being interviewed by David Napier, a reporter for the Anglican Journal, who was working on an in-depth article. Pratt, who was sexually abused by a now-convicted worker at the school, told him, "If the federal government was an individual and you were that person, I'd kill you. Honest to God I would." Later, he said the teachers didn't even call the students by their names. "I wasn't called Ben or even Pratt. I was '38.'"

The consequences of these experiences and the systematic racist discrimination by capitalist employers is shown in the low social, educational, and employment conditions among Canada's Native population. Native people have the highest suicide rate of any demographic group in Canada. Young Natives are eight times more likely to kill themselves than non-Natives. Alcoholism and alienation are rife.

While seven in 10 adult Natives are either working or looking for work, the figure is less than 50 percent on the reserves. Those Natives who had jobs in 1990 earned 30 percent less than the average wages in Canada.

The forcible disintegration of Native culture and communities through the residential schools, the breaking of bonds and cultural continuity among the different Native generations, the pitiful education supplied, and the sexual and physical abuse in the schools, are in a large way responsible for these conditions.

But Canada's capitalist rulers did not anticipate these Native children would grow up and fight back.  
 
 
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