Canada has reached a settlement agreement worth CA$2.8 billion ($2.09 billion, €1.93 billion) with representatives of Indigenous peoples, abused for nearly a century at church schools.
The sum will be placed in a not-for-profit trust aimed at financing Indigenous education, culture, and language, the Canadian government announced on Saturday.
Starting in the early 19th century, the Canadian government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families to take them to residential institutions under the church’s administration.
The schools were meant to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Christian society, effectively stripping them of their identity, culture and language. The last school only shut down in the late 1990s.
What does the settlement entail?
The…