A class action in Ontario saying that the government failed to fulfill its obligations to indigenous people in the program dragged on for eight years before being decided in the plaintiffs’ favor in February.

If approved by the court, the settlement announced on Friday will resolve that case and some others. The government is still negotiating with plaintiffs in other cases, which unlike the Ontario case also involve provinces and include accusations that the plaintiffs were abused by foster or adoptive families.

The government is also still working out the amounts for individual settlements and the wording of an official apology. The settlement announced Friday will include 50 million Canadian dollars for a foundation to educate adoptees about their native languages and cultures.

In an earlier ruling in the case, Justice Edward P. Belobaba of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice called the adoption program “well intentioned but profoundly uninformed” and found that it had a profound effect on the children throughout their lives.

“There is also no dispute about the fact that great harm was done,” he wrote in his February decision. “The ‘scooped’ children lost contact with their families. They lost their aboriginal language, culture and identity. Neither the children nor their foster or adoptive parents were given information about the children’s aboriginal heritage or about the various educational and other benefits that they were entitled to receive. The removed children vanished ‘with scarcely a trace.’ ”

The program was, in some ways, a successor to the residential school system, which was winding down during the 1960s.

While the federal government was responsible for the welfare of indigenous children — something that is a provincial obligation when it comes to all other children — it had no cohesive plan for delivering such services. So in 1965, it began giving provinces money to handle the job through their children’s aid societies and other organizations.