OTTAWA (CANADA)
The Globe and Mail
December 12, 2017
By Gloria Galloway
The federal government says an Indigenous woman who was abused at a residential school must get Ottawa’s permission and that of the Catholic Church, which ran the institution, before she can donate documents related to her case to a centre that is preserving the horrific legacy of the schools.
Angela Shisheesh, 72, says she wants to tell the world what happened to her and her sister at the infamous St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont., and she is determined to have her story documented at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg.
“Everybody has to know what took place in that school,” Ms. Shisheesh said on Tuesday. “This is why I am not afraid, even though it is hurting me as much as it was when I was there. It feels that I am just reliving everything. But I want to do this. I want to be strong for my brothers and sisters who were there.”
In the early 2000s, Ms. Shisheesh was the lead plaintiff in a suit involving 156 students who were physically or sexually abused at the institution. That ended in a financial settlement in 2004 – two years before the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was signed by lawyers for former students, the Assembly of First Nations, the federal government and the churches that ran the schools.
The IRSSA, which compensated those who attended the schools and provided additional money to those were were abused, came after an estimated 18,000 civil actions, included the one involving Ms. Shisheesh, had been launched by survivors.
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