Nora Bernard (1935–2007)
Nora Bernard was a Canadian Mi’kmaq activist, member of the Millbrook First Nation, and survivor of the residential school in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia.
She testified before a House of Commons Committee in 2005 saying, “Sexual and physical abuse was not the only abuse that the survivors experienced in these institutions. Abuses included such things as being incarcerated through no fault of their own; the introduction of child labor; the withholding of proper food, clothing, and proper education; the loss of language and culture; and no proper medical attention.”
She initiated and won the largest class action lawsuit in Canadian history, on behalf of over 80,000 survivors of the Canadian residential school system. After 12 years of tireless activism on the part of Bernard and others, the federal government settled the suit, conservatively estimated at between 3 and 5 billion dollars. She received her compensation check for $14,000 in 2007.
Nora Bernard was posthumously awarded the Order of Nova Scotia in 2008.
Source: www.danielnpaul.com/scan_image/NoraBernard.jpg
While choice is important in all social exchanges, the choice discourse shifts the focus away from a big-picture understanding of injustice and toward an individual one. Were we instead to account for the structural forces shaping what choices are available to us, we might ask questions
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such as: What other opportunities to earn a living wage in the music industry do young women have? What opportunities do young women have to participate in this industry without furthering the same sexist plots? In other words, if they choose to say no, could they still work? The discourse of choice diverts our attention away from structural oppression by placing responsibility wholly in the hands of (in this example) individual young women. And when there are rewards for conformity (such as conform and earn a salary, or don’t conform and don’t earn a salary), how much choice is really on the table? Further, only a very limited pool of women who are considered highly attractive have the choice to star in these videos at all.
It may be worthy of reflection to consider in which contexts we see women’s choices about how to use their bodies as free, and in which contexts we see those choices as up for debate. For example, in the context of music or porn videos, many argue that a woman has the right to use her body in any way that she chooses. In this context, the politics surrounding her choice (such as limited economic opportunities for women) are made irrelevant. But in the context of other kinds of choices, such as reproductive health, it is often argued that a woman should not have choice. What is considered her individual choice over her body in one context is considered open for public debate in another. This indicates that there are more institutional interests surrounding how women make choices around their bodies than mere individual freedom would imply. Still, regardless of the choices of the individual women that star in them, the industry markets these videos to all of us, and we are all affected by their virtually unavoidable circulation throughout the culture.