Item I4 - Global conversations with Sally Armstrong: Interview with Joanne St. Lewis

This video clip documents a portion of an interview with Joanne St. Lewis, a bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada (now Law Society of Ontario), a governing body for lawyers in Ontario. The interview was conducted by Sally Armstrong at the Canadian Forum on Women’s Activism in Constitutional and Democratic Reform on February 14th, 2006, Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Joanne states in the interview "[...] I am the first Black woman elected in 208 years. Now they talk about gender issues there, and from my perspective, I don't think any of those women, other than my colleague who is the only aboriginal woman, has any sense of what a constant negotiation it is for me to be in there. I don't automatically coalesce with the women. I think I have different ideas of what feminism is about. I think I see a liberation struggle for Black people at a global level, which means Black men, women, and children together to be liberated from colonial regime. [...] " The description for the interview on the Constitute.ca reads: "The marginalization of racialized women still continues in Canada. See what Dr. Carrie Best said in 1981 and Joanne St. Lewis in 2006. We still have a long way to go in Canada to address the racism in our society." The video is supplementary interview material for the documentary film Constitute!. Constitute.ca is a project of the International Women’s Rights Project (IWRP), University of Victoria.