Item 2008.3.1.207.1 - Bridget’s Interviews Judgment at Stoney Creek CBC/COOP/CKNW

• Sound recording

1 audiocassette

Audio cassette contains recorded audio interviews with Bridget Moran regarding Judgment at Stoney Creek with CBC/COOP/CKNW, 21-24 September 1990.

Audiocassette Summary

Scope and Content: CBC Radio Interview:

• CBC Radio Interviewer Bruce [last name?] introduces Bridget Moran who discusses her latest book Judgment at Stoney Creek, which describes the inquest into the death of Coreen Thomas, killed by a car driven by a drunk white man in 1976
• Moran discusses what she sees as “Third World conditions” experienced by Natives on reserves in Canada and discrimination against Native People by the Western justice system as experienced in the Thomas Inquiry in Vanderhoof
• Moran criticizes Prime Minster Brian Mulroney for the plight of Native Peoples in Canada; he had noted that the equivalent of $13,000.00 per year is spent on each Native person in Canada; Moran notes most Native people that she knows don’t see that money
• Moran notes that although she wrote Judgment at Stoney Creek in 1977, could not get it published as it was not considered “commercially viable”
• Bridget plans to write a book about her battle with the Social Credit Party
• Moran notes that this book comes out at a time [interview is during the Oka crisis] when Canadians have to be more aware of the need to settle land claim agreements with Native Peoples in BC and ensure that the environment is protected for the future; talks about massive logging and mineral prospecting occurring in BC which she notes concerns Stoney Creek Elders Mary John & Sophie Thomas
• Notes that few white people have been on reserves and have no contact with the Native way of life in Canada

Scope and Content: CKNW Radio Interview:

• CKNW Radio Interviewer Bill [Good?] introduces Moran and talks about the publication of the book. They discuss the status of native-white relations in BC both at the time of the Inquest into Coreen Thomas’ death and in 1990 at the time of the Oka crisis. Moran notes that natives in Canada don’t’ have the benefit of ‘the rule of law’ in Canada and experience injustice in the court system. Discusses the inquest; the role of Harry Rankin in the inquest. Moran concludes that only once Native People are involved in managing their own education, social welfare and political systems in Canada will conditions change.