NTI files suit over residential school abuse

SARA MINOGUE

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. has launched a class action lawsuit against the federal government demanding compensation for Inuit residential school alumni.

“The federal government had stated that they want to settle with the aboriginal people and we wanted to be part of the process,” NTI president Paul Kaludjak said this past Tuesday.

The lawsuit comes just three months after the federal government appointed Justice Frank Iocabucci as a special mediator to handle compensation for students of Indian residential schools. That deal excluded Inuit, and angered Inuit organizations.

The Inuvialuit Regional Corp. in the Northwest Territories and Makivik Corp. in Nunavik are also pursuing the issue.

Kaludjak described the lawsuit as the “initial step” taken by NTI.

“Our main objective here is to help the Inuit population and make sure that we help them get back into a solid family foundation without having this hurt, this abuse, kept inside them,” Kaludjak said.

A statement of claimed, filed Aug. 31, demands the government acknowledge responsibility for abuse in Inuit residential schools, and pay out a total of $300 million to Inuit who were residential school students.

The money should amount to $10,000 per person plus $3,000 for each year spent in school. That’s in line with what the Assembly of First Nations has suggested it would like to see.

The claim lists two plaintiffs. Michelline Ammaq and Blandina Tulugarjuk of Igloolik were both sent to Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School in Chesterfield Inlet at age six in the early 1960s.

Both allege that they were beaten with a yardstick, verbally abused by teachers, and actively discouraged from speaking Inuktitut. One alleges that she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a supervisor at her dormitory.

NTI is compiling a list out of the “several thousand” alumni who lived in Grollier Hall and Stringer Hall in Inuvik, Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife and Bompass Hall in Fort Simpson, as well as smaller hostels attached to federal schools in Arviat, Baker Lake, Cambridge Bay, Sanikiluaq, Qikiqtarjuaq, Cape Dorset, Igloolik, Kuujjuaraapik, Pangnirtung, Payne Bay, Pond Inlet and Inukjuak. Residents of the tent hostel in Kugluktuk are also included.

The suit alleges that children sent to the schools lived in a regime that was “paramilitary in nature” and were deprived of an opportunity to learn parenting skills.

Some students at those schools were beaten, strapped or spanked “in excess of the punishment acceptable by the Inuit community or Canadian society at the time,” the statement alleges.

Others were subject to sexual abuse, including fondling, inappropriate sexual exhibition and oral sex.

Students also missed out learning traditional survival skills, and “were robbed of a sense of the value of their own culture during their formative years,” the suit alleges.

On top of that, Inuit students received a poor education, and many later had to repeat grades already completed in residential schools.

All of this, the 24-page statement of claim alleges, has had profound and long-lasting effects on residential school alumni.

Upon receiving the statement of claim, the Attorney General of Canada has 30 days to file a statement of defence or make an appearance at the Nunavut Court of Justice.