Canned and labelled: Case closed

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Canadian society is clearly having a hard time coming to grips with the legacy of the Indian residential school system. As thousands of Native people come forward with horrific allegations of physical, sexual and cultural abuse, government and church officials are looking for ways to minimize the damage to themselves, sources say, by thwarting the attempts of school survivors to reap their rightful compensation.

Churches claim the lawsuits against them are crippling them financially. Supposedly right-thinking Canadians are coming to the aid of the churches, pressuring the government to get them off the hook.

This exchange in the House of Commons in early March is typical.

"To date, all we have heard on this topic has been unsubstantiated news reports about the government being liable for amounts ranging from $2 billion to $10 billion. Could the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House how much the government will pay to settle these lawsuits?"

"The government has not taken a decision on a formal proposal or plan to discuss with the church organizations involved, or the victims, about a way to resolve this matter more quickly and more cheaply than if we relied principally on the litigation process. However, as the government's special representative in this matter, I have undertaken a new dialogue which I think is going well. Once decisions are made by the government on the formal plan, they will be made known to all concerned."

"In addition to money, are there any other means that the government is considering to acknowledge the suffering of victims and to help them experience healing and reconciliation?"

"Some years ago the federal government set up the Aboriginal Healing Foundation run by Native people at arm's length from the government. It has a budget of $350 million and it is carrying out projects dealing in reconciliation. It could be that as a result of the discussions I am undertaking there could be further action in that regard, but we are already taking important steps with regard to facilitating healing and reconciliation."

In other words, churches and very senior government officials are meeting in so-far secret sessions to decide what to do about the residential school lawsuits. Victims fear a deal is being arranged that won't place their interests first and foremost, which is where they believe those interests ought to be.

Many school survivors who have been active in trying to keep the focus on the victims in this process have expressed little trust for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

They are also suspicious of federal government attempts to find ways to settle claims out of court through an alternative dispute resolution process. They also sense that some lawyers see a chance to cash in on their misery and worry that their interests will be forgotten as the complex legal process unfolds.

Even more unsettling, survivors who have lost touch with their traditional languages and cultures as a result of what the government admits were the assimilation goals of the school system, hear powerful people saying that great harm isn't worthy of compensation.

And the next generation-the children of the children who never learned to be parents because they were separated from their own parents and warehoused in loveless, antiseptic institutions-are told they've been done no actual harm and have no right to sue.

Victims and Native leaders challenge that assumption and say when federal government policy-makers place arbitrary limits on what can be considered actionable, yet another level of abuse is occurring.

"To say the multi-generational effect doesn't affect us . . . even the children of this community (are affected)," said Chief Jerry Goodswimmer of Alberta's Sturgeon Lake First Nation. "It is here. It's still here and it still affects us. We have to deal with it. We have to start organizing different programming to address these issues."

Residential school survivor Nora Bernard, the founde and director of the Survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School (SSIRS) group in Nova Scotia, has waged the battle for acknowledgement and compensation for her fellow victims without any form of funding since 1995. Only last November did she succeed in persuading the United Church of Canada to provide her group with $27,000 for operating expenses. Her applications to the Aboriginal Healing Fund have met with no success.

"The Healing Foundation has monies for the healing of the survivors," she told Windspeaker. "It is our opinion that these funds have fallen into the wrong hands."

She alleges that the political appointees who administer the fund are using money that belongs to the victims and yet the victims have little say in how that money is used.

Alvin Tolley, a residential school survivor from Maniwaki, Que., is another person who believes the Healing Foundation is not serving the victims as well as it could. He's organizing a national victim's group that would insist on a place for the victims in all the processes that have grown up around this issue.

Tolley and Bernard agree that the federal government's alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process is not set up to serve the victims' best interests. In a research paper that Tolley wrote analyzing the plight of victims, he stated that the ADR process is a federal tactic to keep the cost of compensation down.

"The kinds of pressures which federal authorities are exerting on churches has recently taken another form. Private sessions have been initiated between Canada's deputy prime minister, the Hon. Herb Grey, and church representatives, apparently for the purpose of cementing a partnership in a federal initiative-a so-called "Alternative Dispute Resolution'' process. Neither the AFN nor any other representative is invited to speak for their interests at these in-house discussions. The churches should understand that any secret agenda that addresses how justice is to be administered to survivos shall never get off the ground.

"As subjects of such an agenda, most survivors shall regard it with suspicion and reject any prescription for their cheap disposal that is cooked up, either by the government alone or in collaboration with churches," he wrote. "Any compensation that survivors will receive from such an exercise is likely to be token. The government apparently intends to off-set its own potential liabilities by taking into account its funding of the Healing Foundation and other related initiatives being delivered by the Department of Indian Affairs, Medical Services Branch and other federal agencies."

The implication seems to be that survivors are to be cast in the role of defendants while the guilty party assumes the role of judge and jury, he added, saying there is little possibility of fairness or justice in such an exercise.

"Survivors in groups of 50 to 60 are supposed to be 'processed' and reduced to a digestible consistency at the lowest possible cost. They are then to be delivered to their communities for final processing by whatever 'healing' means is available. Any further avenue for going back to the courts is closed. In the end, survivors will find themselves canned and labelled 'case closed' whether they are healed or not," he wrote. "In addition, the lid will have been firmly nailed down on the whole sad history and consequences of Canada's crime and will be hidden forever from public view."

In a phone interview, Tolley said victims deserve to be in charge of any out-of-court process and should be suspicious of any process where they aren't in charge.

"The federal government's setting it up on their side. It's a way to slow down the massive (number) of lawsuits that are coming forward," he said, explaining that the ADR process requires that survivors enter into groups that work out a consensus for compensation rather than going to court. "They will only compensate that group if they can come to a conclusion and the government isthe judge and jury."

Tolley proposes a tribunal made up of victims.

"We were hoping to get support from the national chief and the chiefs of Canada, that they pass on the floor a resolution to pressure the federal government to set up a (nine-person) tribunal," he said. "This would be funded by the federal government and from this tribunal they could do all the research regarding all these documents to look at each file, to recommend to the federal government what each survivor is looking at for compensation."

He would want all nine people on the tribunal to be members of his organization because only they could be trusted to put the needs of the survivors first. Establishing the tribunal would be a good faith gesture by the federal government to set up this inquiry and move directly towards justice for the survivors, Tolley said, and remove the appearance that the government was trying to avoid responsibility for the school system.

Bernard said the ADR process serves only the government's interest.

"This ADR is to safeguard the government from more embarrassment if we were to go to court," she told Windspeaker.

She pointed out that the process completely rules out compensation for several areas of harm.

"They are not willing to deal with the rest of the abuses such as culture or genocide. Abuses such as withholding proper food, clothing, proper education and medical attention. These abuses are and were recognized throughout Canada. We must investigate why we have been excluded from other human beings," she added.