Residential schools were often horrible…
tagged alcohol abuse, drug abuse, First Nations, residential school, suicide and Yukon
…but in regard to the financial settlements that have been paid out in the wake of the many, many court cases filed over the issue, one can’t help but wonder if the cure was, in some cases, as bad as the disease.
I only remark on this because it seems that the First Nations in the Yukon are going to begin a survey in an attempt to count deaths related to the arrival of settlement monies from residential school claims. Evidently, since the dollars began flowing in, “Aboriginal leaders have noticed a higher than usual number of funerals in communities across the territory in recent months, even prompting one chief to organize a territory-wide prayer circle next week.
No one can say for sure how many of those deaths are attributable to the thousands of dollars in common experience payments going to former students and the social problems, from alcohol and drug abuse to suicide, that can arise from such payments, combined with their recollections of the residential school experience.”
Very troubling.
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