Alberta teacher receives 1st residential schools cheque

Last Updated: Thursday, October 4, 2007 | 3:17 PM ET

CBC News

An Alberta teacher who spent 10 years in an aboriginal residential school became the first of an estimated 80,000 former students on Thursday to receive her settlement cheque from the federal government.

In a ceremony in Edmonton, Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, presented the first cheque to Mary Moonias, who teaches on the Louis Bull Reserve in Hobbema, Alta.

Mary Moonias, wearing red, beams in Edmonton on Thursday after becoming the first of the former residential school students to receive a settlement cheque. Moonias, who teaches on the Louis Bull Reserve, is surrounded by family members.
(CBC)

About 80,000 former students can apply for so-called common experience payments — $10,000 for the first year they attended the once-mandatory schools and $3,000 for each subsequent year. Cheques are expected to average $28,000.

Fontaine described Moonias as a "living legacy" of the tragedy of the residential schools, which were prevalent in every province except New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island from the 1870s until the mid-1970s. The last federally run institution, Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan, closed in 1996.

Dressed in traditional clothing and eagle feathers, Moonias, who had been orphaned, said she considered herself a private person, but agreed to mark the occasion only to show her children and grandchildren who they are and where they came from.

Thousands of the former students say they endured sexual, physical and psychological abuse while attending the schools, which were run by churches and funded by the federal government.

The federal Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement will provide at least $1.9 billion to the former students at 130 schools.

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said he hoped the money would "close this sad chapter of history in Canada."

A group of about 200 people who endured very serious abuse and trauma at the schools have rejected the settlement, choosing instead to take the federal government and religious organizations to court for running the institutions.

Former students will spend money wisely: Fontaine

In an interview with the Canadian Press last week, Fontaine criticized observers for what he said was an unhealthy and sometimes racist preoccupation with how residential school survivors will spend the money.

"I still believe that, because the suggestion was that 'these are aboriginal people, they're getting a pile of money, and they're going to waste it,' " said Fontaine, who is also a former residential school student. 

"And it's just not a healthy way to look at this situation."

A recent report by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, based on interviews with more than 100 people who had received cheques under earlier compensation agreements, says recipients saw many negative impacts.

"Increased drug and alcohol abuse was among the most commonly cited consequences of [payments] by recipients," the report states.

One recipient estimated that two-thirds of fellow survivors struggled with their payments. Another was quoted as saying, "If you don't start healing, the money will kill you."

But Fontaine said he thinks people will use the settlement money wisely.