The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations is joining a British Columbia lawsuit seeking damages for former residential school students who were exclude from the damage settlement with the federal government.
First Nations bands in Kamloops and Sechelt, B.C., are launching a case in Federal Court on behalf of so-called day scholars.
FSIN believes there are 30 schools in the province that were left out of the agreement.
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“The Indian Day Scholar survivors suffered the same injustices as the Indian Residential School survivors, said FSIN vice-chief Dutch Lerat.
“Many of them suffered abuse and a loss of language and culture.”
The term day scholars refers to students who attended the First Nations residentialschools during the day but returned to their home at night.
The federal government attempted to address the damaged caused to those who attended the notorious schools in a 2005 settlement agreement with what are known as common experience payments, but day scholars were left out.
That exception has long been a concern for First Nations groups, who have argued day scholars still experienced the harm associated with a system designed to destroy their culture.
Lerat says there are more than four-thousand survivors in Saskatchewan waiting for past wrongs to be righted.
– With files from The Canadian Press
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