Canada has offered to pay more than C$2bn (US$1.7bn) compensation to indigenous people who were abused at government-funded residential schools.
Some 80,000 people who attended the schools over decades are eligible.
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The schools were set up in sparsely populated areas in an attempt to assimilate Canada's indigenous peoples - known as the First Nations - into mainstream society.
Attendance was mandatory and children were forcibly removed from their families and forbidden from speaking their language.
Most of the schools were shut down by the mid-1970s, with surviving students now 60 years old on average. Many victims have already died.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4465102.stm