The story of native residential schools is an ignoble chapter in Canadian history. For more than a century, well over 100,000 aboriginal children attended the institutions, jointly run by Ottawa and four Canadian churches. In all, around 20 per cent of natives, often the poorest from families in crisis, went to the schools. Over the years, politicians and bureaucrats tried to describe the schools in lofty terms; 19th-century documents said the facilities would keep the children "within the circle of civilized conditions" where they would get the "care of a mother." Underlying the lofty rhetoric was one disastrous goal: assimilation by stripping aboriginals of their language and culture.
For generations, the drastically underfunded system subjected defenceless children to emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Among the scarring indignities: children burned with cigarettes and punched in the ear so hard they lost their hearing. Understandably, many victims are now fighting back, demanding compensation for the agonies they endured. What began as a whisper of litigation in the mid-1990s has now become a storm: to date, a staggering 6,324 native plaintiffs (not including class-action suits) are suing the federal government and, in many cases, the Roman Catholic, United, Anglican and Presbyterian churches. Some are seeking damages for sexual and physical abuse, but 90 per cent of plaintiffs also allege cultural loss - a claim as yet untested in the courts. Should these actions be successful, they could cost the government and churches billions of dollars. And potential payouts notwithstanding, legal fees alone, experts say, will almost certainly bankrupt some churches.