Canada will pay up to 750 million Canadian dollars ($598 million) in compensation to thousands of aboriginals who were removed as children from their families decades ago, a top official said Friday, promising to end "a terrible legacy."
The move is the latest bid by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to repair ties with Canada's often-marginalized indigenous population, which says it has been the victim of systemic racism for centuries.
In the so-called Sixties Scoop, welfare authorities took around 20,000 aboriginal children from their homes between the 1960s and 1980s and placed them in foster care or allowed them to be adopted by nonindigenous families.