Tuesday, March 2, 1999 

Alberta Natives claim to be victims of 'Cultural genocide'.

By KEVIN MARTIN, CALGARY SUN

 Government-run residential schools committed "cultural

genocide" against hundreds of Alberta Natives, say lawyers for

two large groups who are suing Ottawa.

Tony Merchant and Vaughn Marshall filed lawsuits last week in

Calgary on behalf of nearly 800 former residential

school students.

If they're successful, the federal government could be on the

hook for hundreds of millions in damages caused in the

educational facilities that ran from the 1920s to 1970s.

The suits filed by Marshall also claim damages against the

Catholic and Anglican churches, which ran schools on the Peigan

and Blood reserves in southern Alberta.

"The cultural abuse that took place ... was the attempted

eradication of the Blackfoot culture," Marshall said yesterday.

Marshall, who is seeking a minimum of $500,000 in damages for

each of his 362 clients, said the schools violated U. N. rules

against cultural genocide.

"Essentially, what the Canadian government sought to do was

assimilate the Blackfoot people," he said.

"The atmosphere that was created in the schools was one of

coercion, oppression and fear."

That assimilation included both physical and sexual abuse, said

Merchant, whose office of 40 lawyers in Western Canada

represents 2,000 Natives making claims.

"They beat the language out of these people and essentially told

them everything Indian was bad," Merchant said.

Merchant's firm launched nearly 400 actions last week to beat a

statute of limitations deadline.

Marshall filed four statements of claim for his 362 clients Friday

for the same reason.

Changes in the Limitations Act of Alberta, which came in to

effect yesterday, now bar lawsuits from being launched more than

10 years after a legal wrong occurs.

Merchant, who has not specified damages in any of the 550

claims he's made in Alberta, said his Cree and Chipewyan clients

were forced to eschew their cultural identities.

"They were punished if they spoke their language," he said.

"All of these people say the one thing I learned in school is

everything Indian is bad."

Along with physical and sexual abuse, students were segregated

by both sex and age, and isolated from their families both inside

and outside the schools.

"It was sort of Brave New World (teaching)," said Merchant.

He said the abuse was of a sexual nature for about a third of his

clients.

"The discipline gone wrong was often bizarre," he said.

"Many, many were subjected to varying kinds of sex abuse."

No statements of defence have been filed by any of the

defendants to the actions launched last week.

Merchant said in earlier claims the federal government has made

a blanket denial of responsibility.