Proposed class action seeks damages for intergenerational trauma from residential schools

Matthew Brandon was six years old when he made his way into Chris and Shannon Gardiner's life.

The boy was non-verbal and had complex needs, and he had already been moved around a lot in the foster care system.

"My wife and I had no training in this. We weren't even licensed foster parents," said Chris Gardiner, who is still Brandon's caregiver and guardian.

Gardiner said he and his wife were originally meant to keep Brandon for a single weekend, as an emergency placement, but that has turned into two and a half decades of caring for and loving Brandon.

Now, the Gardiners are looking for some justice for him, and others. Brandon is the representative claimant in a new proposed class action lawsuit against the federal government seeking damages for the intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools.

The Gardiners, who live in Saskatchewan Beach, about 55 kilometres northwest of Regina, said all they were initially told about Brandon was that his history was complex. They knew he had been apprehended at 18 months old. However, his medical records were sealed.

"We'd been raising a child with autism," Gardiner said. "We sat in countless meetings dealing with autism-related conversations, only to discover in 2012 — after the psychologists had a peek into the social services file — that he had actually endured a brain injury."

Brandon is now 32. But the effects of physical trauma he endured as a toddler remain. He is non-verbal, suffers from intellectual disability, cerebral palsy and other medical conditions, and is unable to care for himself.

The proposed class action, filed by Merchant Law Group LLP, argues that the abuse Brandon's biological parents endured during their time as students at residential school directly influenced the way they parented their children.

Specifically, it argues that Brandon's father, who is now deceased, was "disciplined with violence" while at residential school and carried that with him in the way he treated his own children, resulting in Brandon suffering a severe injury with lifelong damage.

Gardiner said he believes that intergenerational trauma from residential schools is the main reason Brandon has suffered so severely in his life.

"It wasn't just a harm that affected a small group of people," he said. "It actually is intergenerational and has caused calamity and damage to generations of Indigenous people in this country."

The proposed class action was filed Feb. 28 in federal court. It's a national claim to gain compensation for children of residential school survivors. 

The statement of claim says that residential schools were part of a policy that the federal government implemented to "take the Indian out of the child," which caused tremendous turmoil in the structure of family dynamics.