A Yukon lawsuit over the Sixties Scoop is no longer being pursued as a class-action.

Instead, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens Charles Eshleman and Christine Mullin submitted an amended statement of claim to the Yukon Supreme Court earlier this month outlining alleged details specific to each of their lives and individual experiences of being removed from their homes as children.

The pair had originally filed their lawsuit against the Attorney General of Canada and the Yukon Commissioner in October 2017. It was framed as a class-action on behalf of “all other First Nation, Inuit or Métis persons who were removed from their families or communities in the Yukon Territory by or on behalf of the Government of Canada or the Commissioner of Yukon during the period 1950 to 1993 and as a result lost their language and cultural identity and suffered the Rights Abuses and Individual Abuses described herein.”

However, in a July 30 interview, lawyer Dan Shier said Eshleman and Mullin have since decided to pursue the legal action as co-plaintiffs instead of as a class action in order to allow for a faster resolution.

“A class action would take a very long time to arrive at a conclusion, and in order to expedite the case, proceeding on a test-case basis makes the most sense,” he said.

The case has not yet gone to trial.

Contact Jackie Hong at jackie.hong@yukon-news.com