Canada said on Saturday that it had agreed to pay 2.8 billion Canadian dollars, about $2 billion, to settle the latest in a series of lawsuits seeking reparations for the harm done to Indigenous people through a system of mandatory residential schools that a national commission called “cultural genocide,” Report informs via the NY Times.
The new settlement, which must still be approved by a court, resolves a class action brought in 2012 by 325 First Nations that sought compensation for the erosion of their cultures and languages.
Thousands of Indigenous students educated at about 130 residential schools from the 19th century through the 1990s were forbidden, sometimes through coercive violence, from speaking their ancestral languages and practicing their traditions.
Indigenous children were sometimes taken from their families by force and sent to the schools, which were largely run by churches.