By Alessia Passafiume -CP-The Assembly of First Nations says children and their families who lived under Canada’s First Nations child welfare system from 1991 to 2022 can apply for a class action settlement starting in March. National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak says the settlement is an acknowledgment of the harms First Nations people experienced under a “racist system that has broken so many lives and families.” In 2023, the Federal Court approved a $23 billion settlement to compensate some 300,000 First Nations children and their families for Canada’s chronic underfunding of on-reserve child welfare services. The settlement agreement followed a 2019 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) ruling that ordered Ottawa to pay the maximum penalty for discrimination — $40,000 — to each child inappropriately removed from their homes, as well

The post Claims process for First Nations child welfare class action opens in March, AFN says appeared first on The Turtle Island News.