On Monday First Nations children and their families who were caught
up in the on-reserve child welfare system will be able to file for
compensation.
The $23 billion settlement was signed in 2023. It settles two class action claims against the federal government.
The lawsuits were launched after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal
ruled that Canada discriminated against First Nations children on
reserve because it knowingly underfunded programs aimed to help them.
“Individuals who may be eligible for compensation under the period
opening March 10, 2025 include First Nations individuals who were
removed from their homes as Children between April 1, 1991, and March
31, 2022, while living on reserve or in the Yukon and placed into care
funded by Indigenous Services Canada, as well as their Caregiving
Parents or Caregiving Grandparents,” said a release from the Assembly of
First Nations.
“The Removed Child and Removed Child Family classes are two of the
nine classes under the final settlement agreement on compensation. The
additional classes will have claims periods to be determined at a future
date.”
Melissa Walterson and Karen Osachoff are two of the representative plaintiffs in the settlement.
They spoke to APTN National News host Dennis Ward about the agreement.
A former foster child who is a part of the 2020 U.S class action
lawsuit against former fashion mogul Peter Nygard is coming forward
publicly for the first time.
Identified in the court document up to this point only as “Jane Doe
No. 44,” Nadine Moostoos tells APTN Investigates that despite a
traumatic childhood, she is beginning her healing journey after coming
to terms with her past.
Moostoos spent most of her childhood in foster care after she was
apprehended at 18 months of age with her brother and taken into foster
care.
“I got scooped because my mom was a chronic alcoholic and somebody
had called CFS,” she said. “She went on a binge and then they came and
picked me and my brother up.”
At age 11, she was sent to live at Seven Oaks Youth Centre in
Winnipeg after she said she was abused in her previous foster homes.
“I was mute. I wasn’t talking. I wouldn’t talk because of the abuse,” she said. “I couldn’t talk. It was so internalized.”
Nadine Moostoos at 12 years old. Submitted photo.
Two years later, she was sent to Marymound, a school for troubled
girls where she turned to her peers and the street for support.
“I would just run to the streets,” she said. “A lot of those girls I
was in jail with, out on the street with, carried through addiction with
and some aren’t even here anymore.”
According to the allegations in a U.S. class action lawsuit filed in 2020, Moostoos met Peter Nygard when she was 14 years old.
The allegations in the complaint (as statements of claim are called
in the American justice system) have not been proven in court. But they
are disturbing.
“Nygard coerced Jane Doe No. 44 to perform oral sex on him in his
car, while parked behind the Nygard Companies’ (sic) warehouse,” the
court documents state. “Nygard would become very aggressive during Jane
Doe 44’s sexual encounters with him.”
The documents also state that Nygard made Moostoos promises.
“Nygard would pay Jane Doe No. 44 after each occasion in U.S.
currency and would continue to promise her that he could take her to
California.”
Moostoos said she believed she had a modelling opportunity and told her mother, who offered to take photographs of her.
Moostoos said she called the Nygard headquarters to follow up.
Nadine Moostoos was 14 when her mother took this photo. Submitted photo.
“I ended up phoning there and I didn’t know what to say,” she said. “
I was so young and I didn’t have anyone speaking for me so I didn’t
follow through with it, which I am thankful for. “
Moostoos filed a complaint with the Winnipeg police in 2020 and she
said she believes there may be other Indigenous women with stories like
hers in Canada but they are not likely to come forward.
“It’s highly unlikely. It took me a lot of balls and a lot of courage
to do that, coming from the streets,” she said. “I did it because it
needed to be done. And I knew I was not the only one.”
Crystal Brown is the Community Justice Development Coordinator for the Southern Chiefs Organization.
“It takes a lot for someone to speak up and specifically for
Indigenous women whose voices have been continually silenced throughout
history,” said Crystal Brown, who is the Community Justice Development
Coordinator for the Southern Chiefs Organization.
She said the Indigenous alleged victims of Nygard are especially vulnerable because of their past traumas.
“To disconnect from your family creates trauma such as violence,
various abuses, mental health issues and it should be addressed through
our culture, through our ceremonies and our language,” she said, adding
that the impact of colonization continues to reverberate throughout
Canada.
Moostoos said she worked in the survival sex trade for decades and is just now facing the trauma of her past.
“I left that life when I got pregnant with my son,” she said. “I quit
the lifestyle. I got pregnant and that little boy changed my life. I
call him my gift from God that is what his name means.”
Moostoos added the stigma attached to Indigenous women and girls is very real but she urged other women to come forward.
“The more people that come forward the more of a chance that you’ll get to heal,” she said. “That’s the start of healing.”
“Nobody wants to face their demons, face their past, face the abuses
or social injustices that are predatory like sexual assault, rape and
stuff like that,” she said. “I was just a little girl. I never got a
chance to be a little girl.”
Nygard’s lawyers Jay Prober and Brian Greenspan have not responded to interview requests.
The 79-year-old was arrested in December last year in Winnipeg under
the Extradition Act. An extradition hearing is set for Nov. 15 to 19 at
the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench. Nygard was denied bail and an
appeal to that decision was turned down in spring 2020.
Nygard remains in custody at the Headingly Correctional Centre west of Winnipeg.
The Hope for Wellness Help Line is available to all Indigenous
people across Canada who need immediate crisis intervention. Services
are available in Cree, Ojibwe, Inuktitut, English and French. Call
1-855-242-3310 (toll-free).
APTN National News Daniel Frost would flip through family photo albums growing up and see people that didn’t look like him.
He knew them as grandpa or grandma, but they weren’t his grandparents.
Born
Metis, he was adopted as an infant from northern Saskatchewan by
British parents who moved him across the Atlantic ocean to the United
Kingdom. He’s built a life there.
Then last year he decided to make a real effort to find his birth family. Frost figured he’d have a couple siblings.
What he found was a family tree that extended far beyond that. Thirteen brothers and sisters (two deceased).
He first found his birth sister Edna Smith who sent him photos of his siblings.
“Suddenly,
I saw people looking back at me that looked like me,” said Frost from
London where he is training to be a nursing assistant. “I’ve even got a
brother that looks like me. It’s something that is quite extraordinary.”
Daniel Frost
Frost
was born Darin Maurice to Metis parents from Buffalo Narrows in
Saskatchewan in 1968. He was quickly taken by the province’s child
welfare system and put in foster care. This was the era of the 60s Scoop.
It’s now well-known that thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families and adopted into non-Indigenous homes.
Edna Smith was also adopted by a British family but they stayed in Saskatchewan. She
said a death in the immediate family ripped the home apart, which led
to many of the children being put in foster care and later adopted.
Edna Smith/facebook
“I
have a sister in B.C., I have a sister in Washington (State), I have a
sister in Red Deer, one in North Battleford, a brother in Saskatoon, two
brothers in Calgary, a brother in Regina, a brother in Dillon and Dan,”
said Smith.
Frost is raising money for travel costs to visit his family through a crowdfunding site.
“I think it’s awesome and we can’t wait for him to get over here,” said Smith. “I look at him and I know he’s my brother.”
It’s that connection that Frost has always been looking for.
Growing
up in the United Kingdom, Frost was always confused as Spanish or
Italian, even Jewish, because of this skin colour. He was known as the
“little brown boy.” His parents never hid where they got him and he knew
he was Indigenous.
“Most
people in Europe kind of think that First Nation or Native people are
no longer around. They’re found in history books,” said Frost.
Then he came to Toronto in the 1990s to visit friends.
“It was the first time I experienced any kind of recognition of who I was. It was both in a good way and a bad way,” he said.
Some would come up to him and ask if he was Cree and he felt welcomed.
“I
also had other people who were like ‘We know about your people. You’re
all alcoholics,’” said Frost, adding despite the racism, “In a way, it
was quite life-fulfilling, even the bad stuff, because you’re
understanding who I am.”
Both of his birth parents have passed away, his father in 2013 and his mother in 2010.
But in the 90s he made his first attempt to find his birth family and received a package from the province of Saskatchewan.
It included a hand written note from his mother scribbled on a scrap piece of paper.
She addressed it “my darling son.”
“I was quite overwhelmed by it,” said Frost. “Someone else was calling me her son.”
He lost that note in a fire and never pursued his search.
“I’m not sure I was mature enough to handle it at the time,” he said.
But the “little brown boy” from England is now determined to end his search.
