Canada Indigenous Victims of 'Cultural Genocide' Speak in Landmark Case

The class action seeks US$1.3 billion in compensation for the “moral calamity” of the Sixties Scoop. | Photo: Reuters

Survivors of a “cultural genocide” against Indigenous children in Canada spoke Tuesday in a landmark lawsuit against the government for deliberately assimilating them in non-native homes for two decades. The case seeks US$1.3 billion from Canada for the 16,000 Indigenous children who were adopted or sent to foster homes in an assimilation program dubbed the Sixties Scoop.

The class action seeks US$1.3 billion in compensation for the “moral calamity” of the Sixties Scoop, in which Canada sent an estimated 16,000 Indigenous children to foster or adoptive homes from 1965 to 1984.

Lead plaintiff Marcia Brown Martel said the government even declared her original identity dead.

“I just want to say to Canada: We will not allow the harm of our children,” she said in the hearing. “We need to bring our children home, the ones that were lost, the ones that were stolen.”

Canada has justified the policy as being for the good of the children and has delayed the case for seven years. The court adjourned until December 1, when the government will hold its hearing, but the minister of Indigenous Affairs said she would try to negotiate a settlement before then.

Jeffery Wilson, the attorney for the plaintiffs, made the case based on emotional, psychological and spiritual harm and on the “moral calamity” of the policy to “remove the savage Indian from the child.”

The plaintiffs are also filing the suit to protect the cultural identity of their children, because the harm is “profoundly ongoing,” said Wilson.

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