c. 1999 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ The rising tide of native Indian lawsuits over residential schools is creating an impossible situation, according to Canadian government officials, church leaders and even some native Indians themselves.

It has reached the point where Indians who never set foot in a residential school are suing for damages, arguing their lives have been ruined because their parents’ ability to nurture them as children was destroyed by Canada’s residential schools.

The number of lawsuits against the federal government and the churches that ran residential schools _ already topping 1,800 across the nation with roughly 200 more added each month _ threatens to bankrupt denominations, drain taxpayers’ pockets and clog the courts, the religious and government leaders say.

The spate of suits result from alleged sex abuse that took place at the government-funded and church-run schools in the 1950s and 1960s that were set up to educate Canada’s native Indian population and aid the assimilation of the natives to European ways. The 80 schools have been shut down.

Worried about the flood of lawsuits, Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, sent letters in December to law societies across Canada complaining that lawyers have advertised, rented halls and approached former residential school students directly to offer their services.

Saying such tactics test”the boundaries of taste and ethics,”he cautioned that memories of their residential school experiences have driven some survivors to suicide. As head of Canada’s largest native organization, Fontaine said care must be taken to ensure people are not”revictimized”by the process of claiming compensation.

Many federal and church officials, as well as Fontaine, are desperate to find alternative ways to solve the lawsuit dilemma, which has emerged as one of the troubled legacies of the 80 schools.

But proposed solutions are dramatically different and conflicting.

At one end of the spectrum, hardliners say the Roman Catholic, United Church of Canada and Anglican churches that ran the schools _ and the federal government that financed them _ should not pay native abuse victims anything in compensation.

At the opposite end, native advocates argue the churches and government should be ready to hand over billions of dollars to members of native groups who make only a general claim they were”victims of cultural genocide.” University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan, who has published widely on native issues, fears churches _ and even the federal government _ could be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by natives’ rush to file lawsuits.”It’s just a raid on the treasury to take off with hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars,”Flanagan says.

A $2.4-billion class-action suit launched in October by natives connected with the Anglican-run Mohawk Residential School in Brantford, Ontario _ many of whom never actually attended the school _ is the first to claim financial damages simply because some of the plaintiffs’ parents went to the school.

And lawyer Tony Merchant, who represents a couple of hundred natives launching lawsuits over British Columbia residential schools, says it’s an argument he and other lawyers are also considering mounting.

A prominent Canadian Catholic commentator, the Rev. Andrew Britz, is one of the many church officials who believe religious denominations should not have to pay for”cultural genocide.”And they also”shouldn’t have to fork over,”Britz says,”for the private, illegal acts of employees at the schools.””Should an (urban) church cut back on its outreach to the poor or on its education programs … to compensate those who have been tragically abused at residential schools? Individuals must pay the price for their failures,”Britz wrote recently in the national newspaper, The Catholic Register.

Unlike Britz, however, Flanagan says it’s ethical that churches be held financially responsible for abusive employees within the defunct residential school system _ but only if complainants can prove they were truly victimized.

Flanagan makes a distinction between compensating individuals for specific abuse, and handing out money to natives joining a mushrooming movement toward class-action suits claiming general mistreatment at schools in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia.

Individuals who convince courts they were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests deserve to be compensated by institutions, Flanagan said, but he adamantly opposes class-action suits or group compensation, especially for something as vague as compensation for the children of people who went to the boarding schools.

Flanagan, a former research director for Canada’s conservative Reform Party, also believes the churches that once ran Canada’s residential schools should stop apologizing so often. Apologies, he said, just encourage more lawsuits.”I think the apologies are wrong. There are always tragic abuses by individuals, but there was a time in Canada when nobody else gave a damn about the Indians _ except the churches.” The federal government has also been issuing its share of apologies these days. And Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart put up $350 million earlier this year for a”healing fund”that will go to native communities, rather than individuals, to provide counseling and treatment programs.

However, the money does not preclude individuals from suing. Government documents show the federal government, as of March of 1998, had already paid out $20 million to individuals, most of whom were abused at Saskatchewan’s Gordon school, run by the federal government. Two British Columbia lawsuits involving more than 20 natives abused at two Catholic-run schools, St. Joseph’s and Lower Post, were settled out of court in the past two months.

Meanwhile, British Columbia Anglican Archbishop David Crawley, a long-time advocate of native causes, acknowledged if the lawsuit onslaught continues to grow, it”will simply paralyze the country’s court system. It’s created an obviously impossible situation.” Crawley is one of many church leaders encouraging an approach to the lawsuit crisis that is completely different from Flanagan and Britz. Crawley believes the way to avoid lawsuits is not by duking it out with individuals in criminal and civil trials, but by negotiating with entire native communities.

Through negotiation, he said, lies healing. Not just more expensive and painful court cases.”The court system is a very hard system. It’s very expensive. And it doesn’t help healing,”said Crawley, who is among the many who now believe residential schools were a mistaken attempt to turn Indians into Europeans. It’s estimated about one third of Canada’s living native population attended the schools, which were phased out by the early 1970s.

But Alan Early, a Vancouver lawyer representing about 30 native males who were allegedly abused at a United Church residential school on Vancouver Island, still thinks the solution can be reached through the court system and he is not overly concerned about bankrupting churches, or going after taxpayers, for incidents that took place four decades ago and longer.”The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. They have to take responsibility for … this big, big mess,”Early said.

DEA END TODD