Indian Day School lawsuit

"Indian Day Schools were established in Canada by, or with the assistance and support of the Crown. Through mandatory federal government policy Aboriginal children were required to attend Indian Day Schools. Government policy dictated that attendance be compulsory for Aboriginal Children between ages 7 and 15.

These education regimes were designed to negate an Aboriginal Child's cultural identity by depriving them of their way of life in Indian Day Schools where they were forced to learn to speak and read a European language and also to accept a cultural way of life that was not their own.

In the result, these Aboriginal Children and their descendants were deprived of the opportunity to learn about and practise their own legal and social systems, including ceremony and culture and this form of education caused teh fragmentation. oppression and, in some instances, eradication of Aboriginal spirituality, Language, law and culture.

Many children were also subjected to physical, sexual and emotional abuses, in addition to other inflictions of cruelty that took place while the policy was followed through within Indian Day Schools that created the arena which provided for the orchestration of ethnocide and hear cultural genocide of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.

These policies were began in 1920 and existed untill 1996. The legacy of damage done through Indian Day Schools has saturated the very fabric of Aboriginal Peoples of Canada. Generations of Aboriginal people have suffered, and continue to suffer, damage, in addition to those classes that have been specified in this action.

The damage of Aboriginal Peoples, as a result of the federal ethnocide policy is evidenced today in, for example, higher suicide rates, incarcerated rates, infant mortality rates, diabetes rates and Aboriginal gangs."

*from the class action lawsuit of Spiritwind -Joan jack