Canadian court rules in favor of 16,000 aboriginals

By Barry Ellsworth TRENTON, Ont. (AA) – A Canadian court ruled Tuesday in favor of 16,000 indigenous people who were children when they were seized from their parents and put into non-native homes between 1965 and 1984. The plaintiffs had sought a settlement of $1.3 billion, but the court did not award damages Tuesday in the case that has been before the courts for eight years. It was known as the “Sixties Scoop,” and federal aboriginal minister Carolyn Bennett told the House of Commons earlier this month that it was a “dark and painful chapter” in Canada’s history, CTV television news reported. It was a concerted effort by the province of Ontario and the federal government to erase the children’s cultural heritage under a so-called child protection service program, according to the Indigenous Foundations of the University of British Columbia. In the decades before that, native children were taken from their parents and forced into white residential schools in a bid to obliterate their culture. “The legacy of removing children from their families and communities, first through residential schools and then through the child protection program continues to impact the lives of these mothers, their children and their grandchildren,” the Indigenous Foundations said on its website. The federal government argued that in the 1960s times were different and that the government acted with “good intentions”, reported the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s national newscaster. Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba ruled against that argument. “Canada’s submission misses the point,” the justice said. “The issue is not what was known in the 1960s about the harm of trans-racial adoption or the risk of abuse in foster home(s).” Rather, the government should have realized the importance to First Nations peoples of preserving their unique culture, the justice said. The lead plaintiff in the suit was Marcia Brown Martel, 53 who was adopted by a non-native family at age 9 and later learned that the Canadian government had declared her native identity non-existent. She was ecstatic over the ruling. “I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my heart,” Brown Martel said in a statement, as reported by the CBC. “Our voices were finally heard and listened to. Our pain was acknowledged.” The government has not yet commented on the ruling and there was no date given for announcing a monetary award. Similar legal action in several other provinces is pending.

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