First Nation chief threatens Harper government suit for years of boarding home experience
Boarded students cheated of residential schools compensation: chief
November 26, 2007 - A Manitoba First Nations chief is preparing to sue the federal government, alleging Ottawa is denying some former residential-school students their full compensation because they boarded with non-aboriginal families instead of living at the institutions.
Stanley Daniels expected to receive about $28,000 in compensation for seven years he spent at a residential school in Dauphin, Man.
Instead, he received less than half of that.
"It's very unfair," he said. "I've been there a lot longer than a lot of people, and they got more than I did."
Unlike many of his classmates at the school, Daniels was housed off school property with white families for five of the seven years he attended the Dauphin school.
Because he was boarded out, the rules governing the compensation program say he is not eligible for compensation for those years.
Daniels says that's just wrong.
"I lost seven years of my life. All those years you could have been with your family, and it's all gone."
Daniels is appealing the government's decision, as are others from his reserve, the Peguis First Nation, who have received similar news.
Only courts can change rules: Ottawa
If they lose, Peguis Chief Glen Hudson says he is prepared to launch a lawsuit on their behalf.
"They were taken away from their homes and they were wards of these organizations, so they should be receiving that compensation," Hudson told CBC News.
Federal officials told CBC they didn't realize native children had been boarded out, but they can't change the rules for compensation now. Only the courts can do that, they said.
Over the past two decades, more than 12,000 former students have filed legal claims against the federal government and the churches that ran the schools for much of the 20th century. Many of the claims alleged physical and sexual abuse, and said the schools caused them to lose their language and culture.
Under a $2-billion compensation plan approved earlier this year, every student who went to a residential school is entitled to "common-experience payments" of $10,000 plus an extra $3,000 for each year the student attended.
An estimated 80,000 former students are expected to receive financial compensation.