Courageous Native-Canadian Residential School activist assassinated in Nova Scotia?

Edited by Iain Mackenzie

	Nora Bernard.

Nora Bernard, the woman behind the landmark lawsuit for residential school survivors was found dead, on 27 December 2007, in what police are calling a "suspicious death."

"Police were called to a home in Millbrook First Nation, near Truro, N.S., shortly before 3:00 AM and found the body of a 72-year-old woman.

While police have not confirmed her identity, friends and family identified the woman as Nora Bernard.

Bernard was the courageous Native-Canadian activist who spearheaded the class action lawsuit against the federal government.

The lawsuit sought compensation for loss of language and culture on behalf of nearly 80,000 residential school children who suffered physical and sexual abuse in residential schools from the 1870’s to the 1970’s.

The successful suit could be more than $5 billion and is believed to be the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history.

Police have not determined the cause of death but described the circumstances as "suspicious." They spent most of the day securing a warrant to search the house she was found in.

On Thursday, Bernard's daughter, Leanna MacLeod, said the community had lost a "piece of our family puzzle."

"My mother was a fighter -- for somebody to go up against the government and not to back down," MacLeod told Canada’s CTV Atlantic on 27 December 2007.

"It wasn't to be disrespectful. It was to bring the truth about, and that's what she did. She accomplished something that a lot of people only wish they could."

Halifax lawyer John McKiggan said Bernard was determined and single-handedly made the settlement happen.

"Nora would not take no for an answer. And it was only after 12 years of fighting that Nora and the other survivors across Canada were finally proven right," McKiggan said.

Forensic investigators were at the house for most of the day of the apparent crime, and police dogs searched the surrounding area.

Sgt. Randy MacKenzie said they were preparing to handle the case as a murder.

"If the cause and manner of death is determined to be criminal, then certainly we will have to lead the investigation in that manner," said MacKenzie.

The first lawsuits over abuse suffered at residential schools were filed in 1990. But there was no consolidated effort until five years later when Bernard convinced Halifax lawyer John McKiggan to represent her and other Shubenacadie survivors in a class-action suit.

"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," McKiggan said. Nora Norma Bernard had been dragged off to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in 1945.

In his written decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Warren Winkler had described the residential school system as a "seriously flawed failure." His verdict included the Shubenacadie survivors.

"The effects of the residential school legacy were lasting and profound," Winkler wrote. Bernard, her three sisters and two brothers all went to the Shubenacadie school. She spent five years there; her youngest sister, nine.

"It was no place for a child," she recalled. "Once you entered those big doors in the front and they slammed behind you, it was just like going into a prison."

A federal Indian agent threatened Bernard's mother into turning the kids over to the school, warning that if she didn't sign the papers, the welfare system would apprehend the children.

It was a common experience. Noel Knockwood, now 74, went to the Shubenacadie school in 1939 after an Indian agent threatened to jail his father. McKiggan said he has clients who were taken away by Indian agents while Mounties held their parents at bay at gunpoint.

The Roman Catholic Church operated the Shubenacadie school for most of its existence. It opened in 1930 and finally closed in 1967. It took in aboriginal children from the Maritime provinces, Newfoundland and parts of Quebec.

As Knockwood describes it, the goal of the residential school system, which dated back to the late 1800s, was "cultural genocide."

"They were trying to get rid of what Parliament referred to as 'the Indian problem' by assimilating aboriginal people into Canadian culture, so that they would no longer have to spend money on the Department of Indian Affairs and on reserves," McKiggan explained. "It is an incredibly sad part of Canadian history."

At Shubenacadie, the kids weren't allowed to speak the Mi'kmaq language. Disobedience often resulted in a slap across the mouth by one of the Sisters of Charity.

"The goal was to take our culture and our language away from us," Bernard said. "Also, what they were doing was training us as domestic help. The boys were trained for farm work."

References:

CTV Report.

Millbrook's Nora Bernard played key role in multibillion-dollar native-school settlement, LINK.

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