Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) is an agreement between the Government of Canada and approximately 86,000 Native Canadians who at some point were enrolled as children in the Canadian Indian residential school system, a system which was in place between 1879 and 1996. The IRSSA recognized the damage inflicted by the residential schools and established a $2 billion compensation package for all former IRS students and, in particular, those who had been abused or otherwise harmed. The agreement, announced in 2006, was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. As of December 2012 a total of $1.62 billion has been paid to 78,750 former students.
Pelican Lake Indian Residential School
Also known as Sioux Lookout Indian Residential School, Pelican Lake Indian Residential School was established in 1926 and officially opened in 1929. The school was one of the approximately three dozen schools operated by the Anglican Church of Canada. It was the state-enforced Indian Residential School for Ojibway and Cree students from both Treaty Three and Treaty Nine territories in northern Ontario and eastern Manitoba. When it initially opened it housed a total of 125 both boys and girls, but this number increased to 150 by the late 1940s. As like most residential schools, the school was designed in a way that the male and female students had limited interaction with each other. Usually students were removed from their families and brought to the school when they were six years old and stayed until they were twelve.