How have surviving students of Canada's Indian Residential Schools been financially compensated for harm caused to them there? How is it calculated? Has justice been served?
Law students and faculty members can gain a deeper understanding of the groundbreaking Indian Residential Schools Independent Assessment Process during an expert panel discussion taking place on the University of Alberta's Orange Shirt Day, September 28.
"The underlying legal problem is that there is no tort for cultural loss," says Apryl Gladue, who organized the event as the Faculty of Law's new Indigenous student academic and cultural support advisor.
"So how do we prove that these type of abuses happened? What is the evidence? The many decisions coming out of the process are creating new jurisprudence, so we're seeing a living evolution of our legal system."
The panel is titled Legal Remedies for Orange Shirt Violations: The Indian Residential School IAP and Beyond.
The IAP (Independent Assessment Process) is a response to the largest out-of-court class action settlement in Canadian history. It was established to create legal remedies for claims of physical or sexual abuse suffered by former students of Indian Residential Schools. It is a non-adversarial process in which survivors each tell their story to an adjudicator, in the presence of their own legal counsel and a Canada Representative also in the room as witnesses.
Speakers at the panel discussion will include a deputy adjudicator, a Canada Representative and two claimant's counsel. Survivor and second-generation stories will be shared.
Attendees may also participate in a short exercise designed to give them a glimpse of one common experience of residential school students, says Gladue.
The discussion takes place Friday, Sept. 28 from noon to 2 p.m. in Law Centre Room 105.
Orange Shirt Day is an event started in 2013 to educate Canadians and promote awareness about the Indian Residential School system and the impact it has had on Indigenous communities for more than a century.
UAlberta's First Peoples' House and artist-in-residence Jerry Whitehead have created an orange shirt design that is unique to our campus and can be worn on September 28. Proceeds from sale of the shirts will help honour intergenerational survivors of the Indian Residential School at UAlberta by going directly into cultural programming.
The shirts are available through the UAlberta bookstore.