School victims group proposed

Page 10

Plans are in the works for an organizational meeting that could be the first step in the creation of a national grassroots organization of former residential school students.

Alvin Tolley, a Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg First Nation (Maniwaki, Que.) resident, and Walter Rudnicki, a former federal bureaucrat who is now an Ottawa-based consultant who advises First Nations across the country, co-authored Federal Rules of Engagement, The Government's War Against Survivors and the Churches. The paper was completed in June and is an analysis of the legal tactics employed by the federal government as it defends the almost 10,000 claims filed by former students. The paper was completed in June.

During a phone interview on Nov. 20, Tolley told Windspeaker he hopes to have a meeting at the Shawanaga First Nation (near Parry Sound, Ont.) in late January that will sow the seeds for the organization. He wants to help residential school victims understand what the government and the lawyers are up to and how it affects them.

He said the first day of the two- or three-day conference will see the group finalize its incorporation process by electing the board of directors and a chairperson. Other items on the agenda involve looking at healing programs that work and discussing ways to recruit new members.

In the paper, the authors explained why they began the analysis in the first place.

"Our aim was to gain some perspective on a tragi-comic scene that is now unfolding where survivors are spectators at a hide-and-seek game by former players in the residential program," they wrote.

Tolley said boxes and boxes of federal documents were analyzed to gain a well-rounded understanding of the historical roots of the issue. They concluded the federal government, not the churches, is responsible for the policies that shaped the residential school system. They urge victims and their lawyers to work with the churches to stop what they see as a political tactic by the federal government to spread the blame and the liability for the school system as well as delay the litigation process.

"We found no evidence that any church of any given persuasion shaped the legal framework, the policy or the funding practices which governed the operation of residences. We question, moreover, whether any church organization had any delegated supervisory responsibilities that superseded those of the Minister of Indian Affairs," they wrote.

Tolley, a former commercial pilot who did geological airborne surveys for resource companies until he was grounded by diabetes, attended two residential schools: St. Mary's (near Kenora, Ont.) and Spanish (near Elliot Lake, Ont.). He believes the sooner the churches are removed from the legal mix, the better for the victims.

"If [the churches] are to be faulted, it is perhaps for not being aggressive enough in extracting from the government the funds needed to upgrade standards of care and the quality of institutional staff," he and Rudnicki wrote.

The two men also wrote that the government's alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process is a sham that victims would be wise to avoid.

"Its main purpose seems to be to spread the blame and potential liabilities around and to reduce federal costs to a minimum. Our analysis of the process suggests that survivors who opt for a federal version of ADR are likely to be victimized again."

Tolley proposes the group be called the Organization of United Reborn Survivors or OURS. He hopes that regional groups can be established in every corner of the country with a main office in Ottawa.

"We hope to open a very modest office in Ottawa and also to start documenting the survivors' experiences," he said.

He said he's not doing this to create a job for himself. After years of experience in the resource industry, he has found lots of well paying work as a consultant in that field.

"I'm just a messenger. I'd rather go back to consulting," he said.

The group would also, Tolley hopes, bcome an independent watchdog that would keep an eye on all things related to the interests of residential school survivors. That includes the activities of Native political leaders and how the Aboriginal Healing Foundation spends the money set aside to help survivors heal.

So far, Tolley said, he has not met with a lot of enthusiasm from the AFN or the healing foundation.

"You see, what's happening with the AFN, we're not getting no response. I've been there four times. I've written a letter to [National Chief] Matthew Coon Come and there's been no response from him. Through our contacts with grassroots, they brought up the issue to him and he just kept saying as soon as he gets back to Ottawa he'd look into it," he said. "I spoke to one of the directors in that organization and I told him, I said, 'look, we've been waiting for three months now, no response. I told him if I don't get a response by Friday (Nov. 17), we're going to write you guys off. He told me they don't like to be threatened. And I said take it the way you want. We've been very patient as survivors, waiting for three months. No response, so we just said goodbye."

Published reports revealing that the healing foundation has spent lavishly on administration have Tolley viewing that organization with suspicion.

"Somebody's got to oversee them. The chiefs won't do it because they're getting money from them. There's nobody overseeing it to say, 'well, are the survivors getting the best treatment,'" he said.

Tolley and Rudnicki believe the survivors should form an alliance with the churches because the churches have many members who could lobby the government to stop putting up roadblocks to a just settlement for the survivors.

"We've had one meeting with the churches. They were very cautious regarding to go public saying they would support us. What they've agreed is they were excited to see the document because there was no other organization that came forward," he said. "Just before the election tere, when they took it out of Justice and gave it to [Deputy Prime Minister] Herb Gray, what happened there was the churches got their congregations to write in and there were so many letters [the government] could see the impact it would have on the elections.

When he heard the churches were meeting with Gray's staff, Tolley got on the phone to find out what was happening.

"I told them, 'If you're going to have a meeting regarding residential school issues and there's no Natives sitting at the table, it doesn't make sense. So they said they were going to contact the churches and the next meeting we would be sitting there," he said.

Tolley said he has no involvement with any church and no reason to help them out of their legal troubles besides the belief that the government is almost completely to blame for the policies carried out in the schools.

He said he has read too many stories of deaths occurring when students were running away from the schools and too many stories about suicides in the schools. He believes the government is responsible for all of those deaths and needs to own up to its responsibilities honorably.

The survivors of those people are not being served by the current process, he said. Many other survivors are living with the damages that have been done in the school system, Tolley said. They aren't dealing with it and they aren't talking to lawyers, he added, but the members of his organization, people with common experiences, can reach out to them.

Cultural destruction and inter-generational effects from the school have also been ignored or minimized by the government and Tolley believes effective lobbying to persuade the government to drop the adversarial approach of the court system could lead to a just and complete conclusion to the residential school system.

He also believes one other aspect of the school system must be examined in detail and restitution made.

"The legislation further specified that the annuities and interest monies ofchildren committed to such institutions be applied to the maintenance of the schools or to the children. In short, the government expected the children to subsidize their custody with funds held for them by the minister in trust," the paper stated.

The group will lobby to see that that money is repaid with interest, Tolley said.

OURS can be reached through a website -www.kza.qc.ca --or by calling Tolley at 1-819-449-2563.