Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School survivors sue for recognition

Former students of the Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School filed a class-action lawsuit against the governments of Saskatchewan and Canada, seeking the same recognition for the school granted to similar institutions.

Survivors who travelled from across northwest Saskatchewan met at Dakota Dunes Resort Hotel for the announcement Tuesday morning. There were some tears among the gathered plaintiffs, and many wore bright orange T-shirts representing residential school survivors with the website “united4survivors.ca” printed on them.

Michelle LeClair, vice president of the Métis Nation–Saskatchewan, said Métis children were taken from their homes in Île-à-la-Crosse and surrounding communities and enrolled in residential and day schools run by the Catholic Church. The Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School operated from the 1820s until the mid-1970s.

“They were children,” LeClair said.

LeClair said there have been six or seven generations harmed by the school, the effects of which she said can be seen in both addictions issues and the gradual losses of language and culture in the region.

Survivors of the residential school recalled horrid living conditions, mistreatment at the hands of staff, and feeling dehumanized for their culture while recalling the ways it was stripped from them.

Louis Gardener, a plaintiff on the lawsuit, said he attended the school between 1961 and 1969, beginning when he was five years old.

“We suffered the same trauma at all residential schools,” he said.

Gardener said the agenda at the Île-à-la-Crosse residential school was to remove Indigenous culture from the children attending. Being a child with parents who were very traditional and lived off the land, Gardener said attending the school was an especially agonizing experience for him.

He recalled having his name replaced with a number and being beaten with a strap for speaking his traditional language, Michif.

“It did a lot of damage, and if you tried to pull back it’s an extra two (hits),” he said.

The Île-à-la-Crosse residential school has not been recognized or included in any of the residential or day school class-action settlements that have already taken place. As the united4survivors website — run by Waddell Phillips, the law firm representing the plaintiffs in the Île-à-la-Crosse lawsuit — explains, a previous request to recognize the Île-à-la-Crosse school was denied because the federal government claimed it did not run the school.

A statement of claim was filed on Dec. 27, 2022 to start the court process.

The lawsuit will seek compensation for those who attended and their families, though a member of the legal team with Waddell Phillips said an exact figure could not yet be shared.

The lawsuit alleges that the Government of Saskatchewan and Government of Canada breached their constitutional, fiduciary and common law duties to all attendees of the Île-à-la-Crosse school and their family members.

Duane Favel, the mayor of Île-à-la-Crosse, attended a day school in the area which, he explained, was very different from the residential schools where boarded students often faced harsh conditions for 10 months at a time over each school year.

Favel said his father attended the residential school for four years, which is why he’s included in the lawsuit under the family classification.

“All we want is to be respected … and to get the recognition that we deserve,” Favel said.

The mayor said survivors want to appeal to both the provincial and federal governments to come to the table with them.

“Time is of the essence,” he said, noting the increasing ages of the survivors named in the lawsuit.

Favel said he feels the drug and alcohol addictions issues many Métis communities grapple with are “directly attributed, 100 per cent, to residential schools within our community.”

He called for support and open dialogue with the governments named in the lawsuit — with whom the Métis Nation–Saskatchewan and the committee representing the residential school survivors signed a memorandum of understanding in 2019 — to get the recognition and closure that he said Métis people in the area have long been searching for.

LeClair said the harm suffered by former students and their families because of the Île-à-la-Crosse residential school is tremendous.

With the youngest survivors of the residential school now in their 50s, LeClair said action is being taken in this way because action never seems to happen without involving the courts.

The lawsuit will proceed at no cost to the six plaintiffs involved, with all fees being covered by the Métis Nation–Saskatchewan.

“They are part of our community, so they have our full support,” LeClair said.