Bernard's Lawsuit Helped Natives Nationwide Page 1 of 5

Bernard's lawsuit helped natives nationwide Page 1 of 5

Home > Bernard's lawsuit helped natives nationwide Soosaar, John , Halifax Daily News Published: Sunday, December 30, 2007

Nora Bernard, Mi'kmaq activist

Born Millbrook, 1935

Died Truro, Dec. 27, 2007

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Justice. I just wanted justice for my First Nations people that attended residential schools - not only down here - throughout Canada. - Nora Bernard in an interview with David Rodenhiser of The Daily News, December, 2006.

As with most great causes, Nora Bernard's journey to achieve justice for residential school victims began as an idea coupled with steely determination.

It began in 1987 in her Truro kitchen where she interviewed survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. Eight years later, an association of survivors was formed and by 1998 it had more than 900 registered members in Canada and the United States, but no funding.

In 2006, 61 years after she first entered the Shubenacadie school at the age of 10, Nora, and about 80,000 residential school survivors who had joined the struggle, won the largest class action settlement in Canadian history worth about $5 billion.

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Nora spent five years at the Shubenacadie school where she saw physical and sexual abuse, child labour, the withholding of food, clothing and proper education, and the loss of language and culture.

"It was no place for a child," she said in an interview with columnist David Rodenhiser last December after the settlement was announced. "Once you entered those big doors in the front and they slammed behind you, it was just like going into prison."

When she began her struggle, Nova Scotia didn't have class action legislation, and no law firm was willing to take her case until Halifax lawyer John McKiggan agreed to represent them.

"It was novel, no one else would take it; there was no case law," says McKiggan. He agreed to represent them because "what happened to those children was incredibly wrong."

The first lawsuits were filed in 1990, but it was six years later when McKiggan filed the class action suit on her behalf that got the ball rolling across Canada.

"After we filed our lawsuit, a number of other students from other schools filed similar action suits," said McKiggan in an interview last December after their 12-year struggle was over. "Those class actions eventually merged into one national class action.

"I firmly believe that if it wasn't for Nora's efforts, and other survivors like her across Canada, this national settlement never would have happened."

In testimony before a parliamentary committee in 2005, Nora urged the government to scrap the slow and ponderous Indian Residential Schools Resolutions Canada Alternative Dispute Resolutions Process.

"My greatest concern at this time is that the elders are being re-victimized, re-traumatized over and over again, and at the end, there's still no closure and most of all no type of justice," she said. "My recommendation to the government would be that they compensate all the survivors 100 per cent, and that the government, having time and funds, sue the churches for their share of the compensation paid out."

She said most of the survivors are still living in poverty and their descendants are committing suicide, are involved with drug and alcohol abuse, prescription and non-prescription abuse, family violence, sexual abuse and elder abuse.

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