Canada has reached a reached a major settlement with indigenous victims of the so-called Sixties Scoop.<\/p>\n
The federal government has announced a payout of C$800m ($635m; \u00a3488m) to some 20,000 victims.<\/p>\n
Starting in the 1960s, child welfare agencies removed thousands of indigenous children from their homes and placed them with non-indigenous families.<\/p>\n
Canada has been involved in years of litigation over the practice.<\/p>\n
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said on Friday the agreement reached in principle will see $750m spent on direct compensation and another $50m spent to fund an Indigenous Healing Foundation with a counselling, healing and education mandate.<\/p>\n
A further $75m will go to legal fees related to the national settlement.<\/p>\n
A tearful Ms Bennett called the agreement an essential step “to begin to right the wrong of this dark and painful chapter”.<\/p>\n
The full details of the settlement must still negotiated and it has to be approved by the court.<\/p>\n
In February, an Ontario court sided with indigenous plaintiffs in a “Sixties Scoop” class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs had argued that they suffered emotional, psychological, and spiritual harm from the broken connection to their heritage.<\/p>\n
A compensation hearing was set to take place on 11 October but lead claimant Marcia Brown Martel chose to adjourn the court date to pursue pan-Canadian agreement discussions with the government.<\/p>\n
“It was important to me that we got recognition and justice, not just for some, but for as many people as possible,” she said.<\/p>\n
Similar lawsuits have been filed in British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
The agreement is the first step in resolving the remaining Sixties Scoop litigation.<\/p>\n
Over the course of about two decades, thousands of indigenous children were sent to mostly non-indigenous homes in Canada, the US, New Zealand, and Australia – often without the consent of their families.<\/p>\n
In Ontario, an estimated 16,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and communities and put up for fostering or for adoption.<\/p>\n
Many of the children had no contact with their families and communities after their removal.<\/p>\n
By the 1980s, Canadian provinces began changing their adoption policies after indigenous leaders and others condemned the practice as a form of “cultural genocide”.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"