Boarding Home Survivors Eligible for Compensation

Indigenous canadian northerners who were housed in private boarding homes to attend public schools in the latter half of the 20th century could soon be eligible to receive thousands of dollars in compensation, CBC News reports.

The Canadian government and lawyers for survivors reached an agreement-in-principle last month to settle a multi-billion dollar class-action lawsuit over the operation of boarding homes for Indigenous students attending public schools between 1951 and 1992.

David Klein is a managing partner with Klein Lawyers, the Toronto-based counsel handling the class action. In an interview with CBC News, he said many of those children experienced abuse and a loss of identity.

"The children were not only displaced from their families, they were displaced from their community, their language and their culture," he said.

The federally-run program saw an estimated 40,000 Indigenous youth placed in non-Indigenous boarding homes across Canada, including in the North.