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St. Anne’s Survivors Association
Monies raised through the selling of Orange t-shirts was donated to the legal costs for St. Anne s survivors
St. Anne’s Survivor, Evelyn Korkmaz, was proud to present a cheque to Fay Brunning and Michael Swinwood (not in this picture), who are the lawyers for Edmund Metatawabin and St. Anne’s Survivors Association. The cheque for $3,400 are proceeds from the sale of orange shirts by The Anishinabek Educational Institute, on Nipissing First Nation, west of North Bay.
Orange Shirt Day is to commemorate the Indigenous children, who were forcefully taken from their parents, under the Federal Government residential school policy, from age 6 to about age 14 to be taught foreign languages, foreign religion and foreign ways for about 100 years in Canada.
These funds are generously being provided to
St. Anne’s Survivors, to assist them in grueling litigation against the Federal Government. Federal officials were proven to have breached the Government’s legal duty to disclose evidence to individual St. Anne’s survivors, who had to prove their child abuse claims were true. St. Anne’s residential school, operated in Fort Albany First Nation for almost 75 years on the western shores of James Bay, was an evil place for many children. There was widespread sexual abuse, and horrific physical abuse, such as use of an electric chair to punish or frighten the children, use of a cat-of-nine-tails whip on bare skin, and forcing sick children to eat their own vomit. Thousands of documents about the child abuse, generated by police, in criminal proceedings and in civil actions, were withheld from these private and confidential child abuse hearings by Federal officials from 2007 until 2014. St. Anne’s Survivors are still asking the Courts to enforce the Court Orders granted in 2014 and 2015, because Federal officials have still not remedied the evidence in hearings that were breached. The Federal officials are instead seeking to destroy all the hearing documents.
Evelyn Korkmaz, Edmund Metatawabin and St. Anne’s Survivors are grateful to The Anishinabek Nation for its support and these generous efforts to help cover some of the costs of litigation.
Support for survivors and their families is available. Call the Indian Residential School Survivors Society at 1-800-721-0066 or 1-866-925-4419 for the 24-7 crisis line.
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