Indigenous Success Stories: Inuit

NationTalk: Murray Sinclair’s Who We Are: Four Questions for a Life and a Nation is available today, offering readers his reflections on Indigenous identity, human rights, justice and a life in public service, along with a framework for thought and action on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Published by McClelland & Stewart, Who We Are is Murray Sinclair’s story—and the story of a nation—in his own words, an oral history that forgoes the trappings of the traditionally written memoir to center Indigenous ways of knowledge and storytelling. As Canada moves forward into the future of Reconciliation, one of its greatest leaders guides us to ask the most important and difficult question we can ask of ourselves: Who are we?

Structured around the four questions that have long shaped Senator Sinclair’s thinking and worldview—Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?—Who We Are takes readers into the remarkable life story of the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, challenging them to embrace his inclusive vision for our shared future.

Media can access an extensive selection of materials, including an interview with Senator Sinclair, comments from his peers, print and audio excerpts and personal photos here.

McClelland & Stewart will stage a series of public events in the coming weeks, with a group of the country’s foremost voices on Reconciliation celebrating the words and wisdom of Murray Sinclair;

Tuesday, September 26 – Winnipeg, RBC Convention Centre, presented in-collaboration with McNally Robison, featuring Niigaan Sinclair, Stephanie Sinclair and Tanya Talaga

Sunday, September 29 – Toronto, Harbourfront Centre, presented in-collaboration with the Toronto International Festival of Authors, featuring Niigaan Sinclair and Jesse Wente

Saturday, October 15, Calgary, Central Library, presented in-collaboration with Calgary Wordfest, featuring Senator Patti LaBoucane-Benson, David A. Robertson, Shelagh Rogers & Niigaan Sinclair

Thursday, October 24 – Vancouver, Granville Island Stage, presented in-collaboration with the Vancouver Writers Festival, featuring Niigaan Sinclair and Tanya Talaga

For more information, please contact Stephen Myers, 647.500.4295, smyers@penguinrandomhouse.com

NationTalk: OTTAWA – For the third consecutive year, Canada Post will celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21 by issuing three stamps honouring Indigenous leaders.

Elisapie, Josephine Mandamin and Christi Belcourt will each be featured on a stamp for their environmental advocacy and championing the rights and cultures of their Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities.

The multi-year stamp series, launched in 2022, recognizes Indigenous leaders who have dedicated their lives to preserving their culture and improving the quality of life of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Each stamp will be unveiled and celebrated at local events in Montréal, Quebec, and Thunder Bay and Ottawa, Ontario.

Elisapie stamp unveiling event: Thursday, June 13, 5 pm ET, Montréal

Elisapie (b. Elisapie Isaac, 1977) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, actor, director, producer and activist from Salluit, in Nunavik (northern Quebec). A talented storyteller who writes and sings in Inuktitut, English and French, she has devoted her life to raising awareness of Inuit language, heritage and culture through many artistic endeavours. Elisapie earned her second JUNO Award in 2024 for Contemporary Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year for her album, Inuktitut. She is also an acclaimed documentarian, multi-Félix Award winner and creator of Le grand solstice, a musical and cultural celebration televised annually for National Indigenous Peoples Day.

Josephine Mandamin stamp unveiling event: Tuesday, June 18, 11 am ET, Thunder Bay, Ont.

Josephine Mandamin (1942-2019) was born on the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, Ont. A residential school Survivor, Mandamin was an Anishinaabe Elder and world-renowned water-rights activist. Known as Grandmother Water Walker, Mandamin co-founded the Mother Earth Water Walk movement to draw attention to the issues of water pollution and environmental degradation in the Great Lakes and on First Nations reserves across the country. Among her many accolades are the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation (2015) and the Meritorious Service Cross – Civil Division (2017). Since her passing in 2019, Mandamin’s legacy has continued through community water walks and the efforts of the dedicated Anishinaabe women she mentored.

Christi Belcourt stamp celebration: Tuesday, June 25, 11 am ET, Ottawa

Christi Belcourt (b. 1966) is a Métis visual artist and environmentalist known for her intricate paintings that emulate Métis floral beadwork. Born in Scarborough, Ont. and raised in Ottawa, she is a descendant of the Métis community of Manitow Sâkahikan (Lac Ste. Anne) in Alberta. Belcourt uses her talent to celebrate nature, honour her ancestors, advocate for the protection of land and water, and support Indigenous knowledge, culture and language. Among her most poignant works is Walking With Our Sisters, an installation of more than 2,000 pairs of beaded moccasin tops honouring the lives of missing or murdered Indigenous women, Two-Spirit people and children.

The new stamps and collectibles will be available at canadapost.ca and postal outlets across Canada starting June 21.

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Media Relations
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Royal Canadian Mint marks 25th anniversary of the territory’s founding with new silver $20 coin

The $20 denomination silver coin designed by Aija Komangapik is available now on the Royal Canadian Mint’s official website for $109.95 CAD (Image courtesy the Royal Canadian Mint)

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NationTalk: Nunatsiaq News – Inuk artist Aija Komangapik’s work will appear on commemorative collector coins celebrating Nunavut’s founding.

The coin is made of 99.99 per cent pure silver and marks the 25th anniversary of Nunavut’s founding, according to a Royal Canadian Mint news release Tuesday.

Nunavut became Canada’s third territory on April 1, 1999.

The coin features an image of an Inuk mother, which represents Nunavut, surrounded by a ring of markings reminiscent of traditional Inuit tattoos.

“Inside this ring representing the midnight sun, Nunavut cradles Nunavummiut (her people) inside the hood of a traditional amauti (parka), as they dance to the heartbeat of their mother,” the news release said.

The other side of the coin features an image of King Charles by Canadian artist Steven Rosati.

Komangapik was born and raised in Iqaluit but is now based in Gaspé, Que., according to her Facebook page. She is a 24-year-old visual artist, primarily working in digital media.

The $20 denomination silver coin is available now on the Royal Canadian Mint’s official website for $109.95.

After decades in the public eye, the Indigenous advocate and former commissioner pivots to new chapter

The Globe and Mail: It’s a bright but crisp Tuesday morning in Winnipeg and Murray Sinclair is about to do what he’s done countless times before – deliver a speech to a packed room.

This time, as he makes his way to the front of a room inside the RBC Convention Centre, Mr. Sinclair is assisted by two men, who each grab one of his arms, to climb a couple of steps at the side of the stage.

There is a chair set out for him, which he slowly sits down in. He then takes a breath and begins to address the room.

Wearing a beaded vest made by his wife, Katherine, which signifies he’s a member of the Fish Clan of the Anishinaabe, Mr. Sinclair greets those gathered for Manitoba’s public-safety summit and says he regrets he can’t stand to deliver his remarks.

After decades of embracing a public-facing life while advocating for the rights of Indigenous people in this country, notably as the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mr. Sinclair is taking part in fewer appearances like this one because of the state of his health.

These days, the 73-year-old’s life has a slower rhythm. He is staying close to Winnipeg. His baritone voice, used as a lawyer, judge, commissioner and senator, is heard less frequently, while his efforts continue to be deeply felt.

As he speaks to the crowd, Mr. Sinclair’s drive remains clear. The same purpose has propelled him since childhood.

He shares a story about his grandmother, Catherine Simard – his kookum. She attended the Fort Alexander Residential School as a novitiate, whose role was to essentially be a servant to nuns.

Along with Mr. Sinclair’s grandfather, Ms. Simard raised her grandchildren after their mother, Florence, died of a stroke. Mr. Sinclair was one year old at the time of Florence’s death.

Ms. Simard wanted her grandson to become a priest while he wanted to go to university. Eventually, she relented and agreed to sign required documentation.

But she made an appeal that has played on in his mind ever since.

“She looked at me and said, ‘Okay, I understand. So, here’s my request. If I sign these, you have to promise that you will always take care of the people. You have to promise me that.’ And so, I said, ‘I promise you I will do that.’”

These words have been Mr. Sinclair’s guide. When he faces an important decision, he wonders what his kookum would think. Many times – in dreams, he says – she’s appeared before him to indicate: “So far, so good.”

“I am always guided by the sense of responsibility to family and to community,” he says. “Everything I’ve ever done in my life has been about that question: ‘What is it that I can do to help our family, our community to be safer?’”

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This winter, Mr. Sinclair moved into assisted living, along with his wife, who has been medically vulnerable in the past few years. He lives with congestive heart failure, which affects his heartbeat and the way he breathes.

He also has lymphedema, which caused a buildup of fluid in his legs. Though his legs have been drained of fluid, he lost a lot of muscle mass that affects strength, which he says means they do not work as well.

He also doesn’t drive much any more, despite still having a licence. Mr. Sinclair often gets help from his kids or from his assistant, James, to get around.

Inside the assisted-living building, it hasn’t taken him long to form bonds. He’s known for chatting up staff and residents alike, including Bonnie and Clyde.

Bonnie and Clyde are zebra finches, small songbirds known for their social nature. Using a walker, he heads down from his unit to visit the birds in the afternoon, along with their four babies. He lobbied to see them named Bezhig, Niizh, Niswi and Niiwin – one, two, three and four in Ojibwe.

When he stands by their cage, he talks to the birds and gives them instructions, such as to stop fighting. He also sits near them to complete crossword puzzles from The New York Times and The Washington Post.

But Mr. Sinclair is not settled into a life of full retirement. He has returned to law practice at Cochrane Saxberg LLP to mentor young lawyers. He’s also been writing his memoirs, Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation. The questions that inspired the book are: “Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?”

Mr. Sinclair started writing his memoirs as a letter to his granddaughter, whose English name is Sarah, after he suffered a minor stroke. He feared then that he may not be around as she grows up.

The book, expected to be published this fall, will look at the future for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada and include experiences that shaped him as a man, a father of five and a grandfather of five.

Mr. Sinclair is best known for his work leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which spent six years examining the lasting effects of Indian Residential Schools and presented a final report in 2015. The commission’s work, and its 94 calls to action, have formed a blueprint for change for the country.

He is also recognized for other roles, such as serving as co-commissioner of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry. Established in 1988, it was created in response to the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the shooting death of J.J. Harper after an encounter with a Winnipeg police officer. The events raised significant questions about how the justice system was failing Indigenous people.

Mr. Sinclair was Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge. Additionally, he conducted a pediatric cardiac inquiry called after 12 children died in 1994 while undergoing or shortly after having surgery at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre.

In 2016, he was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and he retired from that role in January, 2021. The following July, he was named as the first-ever Indigenous person to serve as the chancellor of Queen’s University. He decided not to seek reappointment but will stay on at Queen’s as a special adviser to the principal on reconciliation. 

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Mr. Sinclair grew up in Selkirk, Man. The small town, which has a population of approximately 10,500 people, is evidently proud of its connection to him.

There is a Murray Sinclair Park, which Mayor Larry Johannson said “will serve as a constant reminder to young people who play there that they too can grow up in our community and accomplish great things.”

Inside the Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School, the cafeteria is called Senator Sinclair Commons. A mural of him was painted on the wall by Winnipeg artist Charlie Johnston, along with some students. During a recent visit, Mr. Sinclair said he admired the effort put into it and said, “It’s nice to be honoured in that way.”

The area is filled with lasting childhood memories. One house – now gone – where he lived with his grandparents, north of Selkirk, was located close to the Red River and he used to swim there.

Mr. Sinclair also fondly recalls growing up alongside his “twin” (well, almost). His late brother, a massive Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan called Buddy (whose legal name was Henry Jr.), was born a year after Murray and was his “comrade-in-arms.”

While he is lauded for his ability to speak about the country’s most difficult moments, Mr. Sinclair, whose Ojibwe name is Mizanay Gheezhik, meaning “the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky,” is a warm and social person at his core.

When you show him a picture of a child – which is pretty much a must if you’re a parent who shares any amount of time with him – his face lights up with a wide smile. His quirky sense of humour is a hallmark of his personality. Take, for example, when he dressed up as a bumblebee to impress his granddaughter for Halloween. And then there was the time he was Shrek.

Niigaan Sinclair, Mr. Sinclair’s son, a well-known commentator on Indigenous issues and a professor at the University of Manitoba, says his father carries “a spirit of humour” to cope with some “very, very hard things.”

He says his father also loves people – when he’d go with his dad to the mall to run a simple errand, such as getting a tube of toothpaste at a drugstore, it would somehow turn into a four-hour trip.

“Dad can’t not talk to people and visit with people,” he says. “Of course, he knows everybody because he’s done everything.”

Niigaan says his father is still the same way and he wants to hear people’s stories. He says his dad also carries the weight of some of the most horrific ones in the country’s history.

As the head commissioner of the TRC, his father was “the listener” who heard brutal and violent accounts from the perspective of survivors and what they experienced during their childhoods at residential schools.

“How could you not have that burden to carry for the rest of your life?” Niigaan says. “At this phase of his life, it’s not just physical health. It’s the fact that he’s – for his entire career – helped this country through its most difficult and darkest chapters.”

But he says a remarkable thing about his dad is how he is “able to carry those stories a little bit lighter” because of his commitment to traditional Anishinaabe ceremonies, spending time with his children, his grandchildren and in Winnipeg and Treaty 1 territory.

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Mr. Sinclair makes it known it was a text message from Manitoba’s new Premier, Wab Kinew, sent only a few days prior, that led to his appearance at the public-safety summit. He said he usually requires more notice to get somewhere, but he told Mr. Kinew: “Because it’s you, I’ll do it.”

The two go way back – to the time when Wab, now 42, was learning to crawl.

The Sinclair and Kinew families founded an Anishinaabe preschool together. The idea was fuelled by a desire to ensure their children learned the Ojibwe language, as well as their culture. The program began in the living room of the Sinclair home and eventually they secured space through the Winnipeg school division for it. The families remain close.

At the ceremony last October, Mr. Sinclair called the swearing-in of the new Premier “Manitoba’s true act of reconciliation.”

Mr. Kinew, on the other hand, sees Mr. Sinclair as “the living embodiment of reconciliation in Canada” – someone he describes as a wise and calm presence who is focused on bringing people together.

“To me that is what a reconciliation is all about,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Kinew also feels indebted to Mr. Sinclair.

“You don’t get the opportunities that I’ve enjoyed in my life without the contributions of Murray Sinclair,” he said. “As much as I feel like I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude, I hope all Canadians feel the same way.”

Looking at the future, Mr. Kinew believes his mentor “will always have a tremendous role in the public discourse of this country.”

At this juncture of his life, Mr. Sinclair sees himself having a strong sense of who he is and a good sense of humour. He admits, when speaking of his energy levels, that he doesn’t “last long” and he knows when it’s time to rest.

“I don’t know about that, but okay,” Niigaan says with a chuckle. “He will give and give and give. And sometimes, he needs others to remind him of the importance of loving himself.”

When people reach a certain age, especially after a long career in public service, Niigaan says, they need to determine the contribution they will continue to make while focusing on family and community.

Niigaan says his father needs care and support with his health. In turn, the family wants to spend as much time as they can with him.

“He also wants to give to us the stories that perhaps he hasn’t shared for most of our lives,”Niigaan says.

“These are things that I think he wants to give to us before he travels to the west as they say in our culture, which is, enters the next spiritual phase of his life, where he goes and visits our relatives.”

There, people like Mr. Sinclair’s grandmother – his beloved kookum – will be waiting for him.

Nationtalk: Ottawa, ON – The National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) is proud to congratulate our CEO, Jocelyn W. Formsma, on the announcement that she has been awarded the 2024 Indspire Public Service Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the Indigenous community. This well-deserved honour is a testament to Jocelyn’s more than 20 years of dedicated service within the Friendship Centre Movement and her unwavering commitment to the betterment of all aspects of life for Indigenous people.

Jocelyn has played a pivotal role in advancing Indigenous causes through her extensive volunteer and board work with organizations such as the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), Indigenous Bar Association (IBA), Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) and National Indigenous Collaborative Housing Inc. (NICHI). Her tireless efforts have left an indelible mark on the Indigenous community, fostering positive change, and promoting inclusivity.

Board President Kelly Benning expressed admiration for Jocelyn’s exceptional contributions, stating, “Jocelyn’s leadership and passion for serving the Indigenous community are truly inspiring. Her over two decades of commitment to the Friendship Centre Movement and her active involvement with various organizations demonstrate a profound dedication to the betterment of Indigenous lives. We are immensely proud to have her as the driving force behind the NAFC, and this award is a well-deserved recognition of her exemplary public service.”

Jocelyn’s visionary leadership has not only shaped the trajectory of the NAFC but has also made a lasting impact on the broader Indigenous community. The Indspire Public Service Award reflects her outstanding achievements, commitment to social justice, and unwavering advocacy for Indigenous rights.

Please join us in congratulating Jocelyn on this remarkable achievement and expressing gratitude for her continuous efforts to make a positive difference in the lives of Indigenous people.

Media Inquiries

Senior Communicdation Coordinatior

jpaille@nafc.ca

NationTalk: Indspire is thrilled to announce the 2024 Indspire Awards, an annual celebration honouring the remarkable achievements and contributions of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada. This prestigious event will take place on April 18th, 2024, at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa, bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians from across the country.

The Indspire Awards recognize Indigenous professionals and youth who demonstrate outstanding career achievement, promote self-esteem and pride for Indigenous communities, and provide inspirational role models for future generations. This year’s event marks the 31st anniversary of the awards, a testament to the enduring commitment of Indigenous peoples to pursuing excellence in multiple fields of endeavour.

The 2024 Indspire Awards recipients are:

Youth Recipient
Adam Gauthier
Tla’amin Nation, BC

Youth Recipient
Braden Kadlun
Kugluktuk, NU

Youth Recipient
Dr. Jayelle Friesen-Enns
Red River Métis, Manitoba Métis Federation, MB

Arts
Eden Robinson
Haisla, BC

Business & Commerce
Victoria LaBillois
Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation, QC

Culture, Heritage & Spirituality
Edna Manitowabi
Wiikwemikoong Unceded Territory, ON

Education
Kanonhsyonne Jan Hill
Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, ON

Health
Lea Bill
Pelican Lake First Nation, SK

Language
Ronald Eric Ignace
Skeetchestn Indian Band, BC

Law & Justice
The Honourable Michelle O’Bonsawin
Abenaki First Nation of Odanak, QC

Public Service
Jocelyn Formsma
Moose Cree First Nation, ON

Lifetime Achievement
Thomas V. Hill
Six Nations of the Grand River, ON

For more information about each of the recipients, please visithttps://indspire.ca/events/indspire-awards/laureates/

The documentary Twice Colonized is an intimate look at Peter’s strength, determination and dedication

CBC Indigenous: Aaju Peter is an activist, lawyer, educator and clothing designer, most famous for her work defending the rights of the Inuit in Canada and Greenland. She travels the world to raise awareness of the challenges Inuit communities face, and fights to preserve their language and culture, especially the seal hunt. 

Peter has led an extraordinary life. The film Twice Colonized is an in-depth, intimate look at her strength, determination and dedication.

Born in Greenland, Peter was sent to Denmark alone at 11

Peter was born in 1960 in Arkisserniaq, Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat in Greenlandic). Her father was a pastor and teacher, and her family moved around to his various postings on the island’s west coast. When Peter was 11, her parents sent her to school in Denmark alone, and she lived with different white families until she was 18. “My whole world changed instantly,” Peter says in Twice Colonized. “I had to learn to sit at a table and use a knife and fork to eat my food. I had to learn to brush my teeth. When you’re trying to ‘whitenize’ little Inuit, you separate them from their parents, you separate them from their peers.”  

The experience, which seemed at first a privilege for an academically gifted child, had devastating effects. Peter learned Danish, English, German, French and Latin, but nearly lost the ability to speak her native Kalaallisut, or Greenlandic Inuit. This period was also extremely lonely for her as she had to adjust to a new place every year.

When she returned to Greenland in her late teens, she was ridiculed for losing her language and culture. This humiliation profoundly affected her, leading to a lifelong dedication to exploring and connecting with her Inuit culture. 

• Decolonizing documentaries: Film highlights the difficulties of filmmaking outside colonial borders

Relentlessly advocating for the rights of the Inuit

In the early 1980s, Peter moved to Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit). She raised five children while working with cultural organizations and women’s groups, helping to establish a women’s shelter and food bank. 

In the 1990s, Peter enrolled in Inuit studies at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, and then the Akitsiraq Law School Program, affiliated with the University of Victoria and designed to increase the number of Inuit lawyers in Nunavut. She was called to the bar in 2007 when she was in her 40s. Ever since, Peter has relentlessly advocated for the rights of the Inuit, including protesting the anti-sealing legislation at the European Union. Even though she’s said she feels like “a fly on the wall” to European legislators, who are making decisions that affect the Inuit without the community’s input, she continues to fight. Twice Colonized follows Peter’s efforts to establish a permanent Indigenous forum at the EU. 

Peter has also developed school programs for the Inuit community, taught Inuktitut, and was a cultural adviser and lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan’s Nunavut Law Program. She’s worked as a cultural facilitator, collecting Inuit customary law from elders on behalf of Nunavut’s justice minister.

In 2012, Peter received the Order of Canada for preserving and promoting Inuit culture and practices. 

Peter’s artistic work

Peter is a craftsperson, designer, singer and dancer. She learned how to work with sealskin while rediscovering Inuit traditions in the ’80s, and her designs are an innovative blend of Inuit and modern styles. Peter creates everything from traditional amautiit (sealskin parkas) to tank tops, vests, handbags and ties — she made a sealskin coat for former governor general Adrienne Clarkson. Peter has released an album of Inuit songs and Greenlandic classics, and performed drum dances and traditional songs around the world.

Peter is co-writer and an executive producer on Twice Colonized, which was seven years in the making. She is writing a book about her life to help others who can relate to the struggles she has experienced. 

Peter in focus

This film isn’t the first to show Peter’s determination. She’s featured in Angry Inuk, a documentary by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (a producer on Twice Colonized) about a new generation of Inuit defending the seal hunt as a means to sustain themselves. Peter was also in Arnaquq-Baril’s Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos, a profoundly personal work in which the filmmaker learns about traditional Inuit face tattoos for women and decides to get some of her own. Peter appeared in John Walker’s film Arctic Defenders, which follows the radical Inuit movement, begun in 1968, to reclaim their land and establish a new territory, Nunavut, and a government they’d control. 

Remarkably, these films only scratch the surface of Peter’s incredible life.

Twice Colonized had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival, and was the opening film at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto. Watch it now on CBC Gem.

Great-nephew Danny Pottle hopes more Indigenous vets will be recognized

CBC News: The village of Masnières in northern France honoured one of its war heroes on Friday, unveiling a plaque dedicated to Labrador Inuk John Shiwak. Lance-Cpl. Shiwak was born in Rigolet in 1889, and is believed to have died in Masnières while fighting to liberate France in 1917. He was highly respected in his role as a sniper, and was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal.

His great-nephew, Danny Pottle, was grateful to see his relative receive such an honour abroad. “It’s a mixed bag of emotions,” Pottle told The St. John’s Morning Show on Friday. “This has been a dream of ours for quite some time, and it’s an honour and we’re so happy that this is taking place today.”

Pottle started advocating alongside his brother, Barry, about 20 years ago looking for ways they could honour their great-uncle and other Indigenous veterans. The connections they made included French historian Jean-Marie Labre and Canadian author and researcher France Rivet.

Together, they approached Masnières leaders and proposed the idea of a plaque commemorating Shiwak near where he’s believed to have died. Masnières is also home to one of the statues along the Trail of the Caribou — an ode to Newfoundland’s accomplishments, contributions and sacrifices during the First World War. “It just snowballed from there,” Pottle said. “They took it to city council, and city council unanimously approved the proposal.”

The plaque is on the outside wall of an elementary school, which stands near the spot where a German shell killed seven soldiers on Nov. 21, 1917. The area saw extensive fighting after Shiwak’s death, and his grave site was lost.

“Shiwak was a skilled hunter, trapper and fisherman,” the plaque reads. “He enlisted with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment on the 24th of July, 1915. He would become one of the most respected and effective snipers in the Regiment.”

The plaque is inscribed in three languages — English, French and Inuttitut.  It goes on to refer to Shiwak as “one of the unsung heroes of the Great War.”

“He was very much celebrated from what I’ve gathered,” Pottle said. “[The French] were, and still are, quite intrigued that a young Labrador Inuk in those days would answer the call and come to help liberate France during the First World War. So he’s quite revered, from what I can gather, in France and throughout Europe.”

Pottle couldn’t make it to the ceremony — which was first scheduled for 2020, but delayed due to the pandemic — but it was attended by representatives of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and Royal Canadian Legion, Newfoundland historian Frank Gogos, and a pair of cabinet ministers from the provincial government.

While municipal leaders in Masnières were quick to pick up the torch for Shiwak, Pottle said government leaders in Canada have been slower to take action on home soil. He hopes to see that change now.

“I hope after today’s ceremony, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Canada will pick up the slack and continue to help do the work to honour our Indigenous veterans as they should be honoured,” Pottle said.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

With files from The St. John’s Morning Show

NationTalk: OTTAWA – Canada Post will once again mark National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21 by issuing a set of stamps honouring three Indigenous leaders.

Nellie Cournoyea, George Manuel and Thelma Chalifoux will each be featured on a stamp recognizing their dedication to advocate for the rights of the Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities they proudly served.

This stamp issue is the second in Canada Post’s multi-year Indigenous Leaders stamp series, launched last year. Each stamp will be unveiled at local events in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, North Vancouver, British Columbia and St. Albert, Alberta.

Nellie Cournoyea stamp unveiling event: June 11, 1:30 pm (Mountain Time), Ulukhaktok, N.W.T.

Nellie Cournoyea (b. 1940) has devoted her life to fighting for Indigenous self-determination and Inuit empowerment. Selected as Premier of the Northwest Territories in 1991, she became the first Indigenous woman to head a provincial or territorial government in Canada. She played a key role in the discussions leading to the creation of Nunavut, and after leaving office in 1995, she served for 20 years as chair and chief executive officer of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Cournoyea is currently chair of the Nutrition North Canada Advisory Board and vice-chair of the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation.

George Manuel stamp unveiling event: June 12, 1 pm (Pacific Time), North Vancouver, B.C.

George Manuel (1921-1989) was a First Nations political leader, author and champion of Indigenous Peoples. Over the course of a political career that spanned four decades, he held many influential roles and worked to improve the social, economic and political conditions of First Nations people in Canada. His efforts contributed to the inclusion of Indigenous and treaty rights in the Canadian Constitution. Co-founder of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, Manuel was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and received many acknowledgments for his work, including an appointment as Officer of the Order of Canada.

Thelma Chalifoux stamp unveiling event: June 13, 1 pm (Mountain Time), St. Albert, Alta.

Thelma Chalifoux (1929-2017) was a Métis activist who channelled the strength she gained from her own personal challenges to help others and fight against discrimination. The first Indigenous woman appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1997, she devoted her life to improving the welfare of her people, particularly Métis women. She was instrumental in helping create provincial programs for Indigenous Peoples in the areas of housing, education and social assistance. Chalifoux also served as Métis Elder in Residence at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and helped found the Métis museum and resource centre Michif Cultural Connections, located in St. Albert.

The new stamps and collectibles will be available at canadapost.ca and postal outlets across Canada starting June 21.

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For more information:

Media Relations
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media@canadapost.ca

She’s out-debated politicians and outmanoeuvred diplomats. Now, Canada’s first Inuk governor general sets her sights on reconciliation

The Walrus – “INSIDE THE SENATE you can already see [the] presence of an Inuk Elder who is getting ready to light the qulliq,” Rosemary Barton, CBC chief political correspondent, told viewers on July 26, 2021.

The black and yellow news ticker at the bottom of the screen announced that Mary Simon would be installed as Canada’s first ever Indigenous governor general. “[The qulliq] is a traditional Inuit oil lamp that was used to sometimes warm the home, warm the igloo,” continued Barton, doing her best to describe something that most Canadians had probably never seen. The network cut to a shot of Inuk Elder Sally Webster inside the Senate chamber, striking a match on a red box and lighting the oil. “Oh! There it’s happening right as I speak, look at that,” said Barton.

Spread atop a nearby table were a few official documents and four medals. Each medal signifies an Order, a ceremonial office—the Order of Canada, say, or the Order of Military Merit—to which Simon would be inducted so she could carry out her responsibilities as the Crown’s representative in Canada. The display reminded me of the way at.óow, or sacred regalia, is set before witnesses at a Tlingit potlatch, or the way wampum treaty belts and gustoweh feather headdresses are laid at the front of a longhouse before the Haudenosaunee recite Kayanerenkó:wa, their Great Law of Peace. But of all the symbols endowed with special significance that day, it was the qulliq that stood out. And, boy, did Barton want to get her pronunciation right. “The qulliq, as it’s called,” she said. “I would imagine the very first time it’s been lit here, too, inside the Senate.”

At the head of the state, the tippy top, above the clamour of parliamentarians, premiers, and prime ministers—in fact, above all politicians and their policies—sits tradition. In Canada, as in the other commonwealth offspring of the British empire, the Crown is the sovereign. Appointed by the Crown, the governor general is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and constitutional head of state. Though the role is apolitical, the governor general can offer counsel to the prime minister. They bestow honours like the Order of Canada on worthy citizens. And they convene politicians and Canadians at home and abroad, setting the table for conversations that shape Canadian civic culture and identity.

The governor general is one of the oldest colonial institutions in North America and can be traced back to the early seventeeth century, and to the first governor of New France. After the British defeated the French in the Seven Years’ War, English governors assumed the office. The role was mandated during Confederation. A Canadian-born governor general, however, was not appointed for almost 300 years, until 1952, during the disintegration of the British empire. Seven years after that, the first French Canadian was sworn in.

Ever since, there has been an unofficial policy of alternating between anglophone and francophone heads of state. The idea is that, above the tensions of Canadian society—between English and French, Liberals and Conservatives, settlers and Indigenous—there is a common symbol, institution, and office that’s not mired in politics or policy. While the republic to Canada’s south wages cultural battles verging on civil war, the prevailing Canadian political philosophy is that “peace, order and good government” are achieved, in part, by keeping the Crown, represented by the governor general, above the fracas. That’s the Canadian way. But that’s not the tradition this story is about.

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IN MAY 2021, ground-penetrating radar detected more than 200 potential unmarked graves of children in an apple orchard beside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, where my kyé7e (“kya-ah,” grandmother) completed high school. The discovery exposed the crimes underlying a nation built on land taken from Indigenous peoples—systemic abuse, assault, rape, even murder—and reinforced the need for a national reckoning. Makeshift memorials sprung up across the country. People took to the streets. Institutions named after the architects of cultural genocide changed their nomenclature. Statues fell. Churches were vandalized. Some even burned. And as more First Nations initiated their own investigations, the potential number of child-sized graves climbed into the thousands.

Less than two months after the discovery at Kamloops, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Inuk leader and former Canadian diplomat Mary Jeannie May Simon to offer her a job. Canada has had four women (two of them refugees) and dozens of white men serve as governor general for a term that usually lasts five years. But there had never been an Indigenous person appointed. (New Zealand, another former settler colony of the British empire, has had three Māori governors general.)

Simon’s path to that role was unlike any walked by a governor general before. Like all Inuit born between 1941 and 1978, she was given a loonie-sized red metal disc as a form of identification when she was a child. It had an intricate picture of a crown on one side and her ID number on the other. Simon’s parents—her father a white store manager and her mother an Inuk woman—were not allowed to marry according to the policies of her father’s employer, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Canada took many of Simon’s community members from loving homes to residential schools. During World War II, Canada appropriated Inuit land for military bases and natural resources. In the 1950s and ’60s, Canada used relocated Inuit bodies and communities to lay claim to the far north in its tussle against other world powers. When those same world powers met to make decisions that would impact Inuit land, water, and life in the ’80s and ’90s, they did not initially give Inuit a seat at the table. Today, Inuit are one of the only linguistic groups in the world who constitute a majority in their region but cannot access social services in their primary language, Inuktut. Canada and the Crown have wronged them many times.

Simon spent much of her career fighting those wrongs. “I’ve been working on Indigenous rights for forty-seven years,” Simon told me. “I am first and foremost an Inuk.” And hers was often a winning fight. Unlike many other Indigenous peoples, Inuit held on to much of their territory, language, and culture. And when qallunaat (“ha-loo-not,” or colonizers) tried to take these, Inuit took the qallunaat on in their qallunaat courts, qallunaat negotiating rooms, and qallunaat parliament. In the ’70s, Inuit and their Cree neighbours stood up to Quebec and said that the province could not build an enormous complex of hydroelectric dams, which would permanently flood their lands along James Bay, without dealing with Indigenous peoples first. Their collective stand halted construction for a time and compelled the province to sign what is sometimes called the first “modern treaty,” in 1975. The agreement marked the end of the days when qallunaat could bulldoze Indigenous lands and peoples before we’d had our say. Simon cut her teeth on those negotiations. There aren’t many history books that tell the story of Simon and the Inuit movement. Indigenous history of any kind—the tragic or the triumphant—doesn’t get much ink. But if you check the record, you’ll see that at almost every turn, Mary Simon was there.

Her installation ceremony was held in the same building that, forty years earlier, was the main staging ground for negotiating the patriation of Canada’s Constitution from the British. As a member of the Inuit Committee on National Issues, Simon was one of the people who made sure Inuit specifically and Indigenous peoples collectively had our rights ensconced in the Constitution. (Today, there’s an Indigenous streetwear brand, Section 35, named for the clause that affirms those rights.) In one of the committee’s meetings with then prime minister Pierre Trudeau, held in March 1984, she insisted that gender and sexual equality for Indigenous women needed to be explicitly protected. Indigenous women—including her own mother—had lost their native status due to a provision in the Indian Act that stated a native woman who married a non-native man forfeited her native status. Trudeau disagreed, arguing that gender and sexual equality had already been addressed in the Constitution. The exchange stands out as one of the most significant, if overlooked, moments in Canadian feminist history. 

“I wish you and your sisters would take it out of your head that somehow we are deliberately trying to frustrate the concept of equality. At least, in the law, everyone has assured you here that we are not,” Trudeau intoned, with an incredulity that bordered on condescension. Between sentences, he sucked the temple tip of his eyeglasses while he tried to set his argument straight. “You know, in a sense, you’re equal when you think you’re equal. And if you think you are unequal, the law won’t change much.” 

“Mr. Prime Minister, I consider myself an equal,” responded Simon without batting an eye. “I am an Aboriginal representative who represents both male and female persons in Northern Quebec. I have always tried to be very unbiased towards whom I represent because I feel that, as people, we have one interest, and that is our collective and individual rights. And all I’m saying here is, as someone who represents both sides, I would like to see the equality clause once and for all settled.” She was on the winning side of that fight too. In 1985, the Indian Act was amended so that Indigenous women kept their status when marrying a non-native. Furthermore, women who married prior to the amendment could regain their status. 

But Simon’s battles did not stop at the national level. In the 1990s, she outmanoeuvred American diplomats to win Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous peoples permanent seats on the Arctic Council, a multinational forum comprised of states and Indigenous peoples in the region. The Arctic Council is today the only international forum where Indigenous peoples sit at the same table as nation states. Step by step, Simon and other Inuit have crafted one of the greatest political traditions of any Indigenous or minority group in the world. “I knew Mary Simon before I actually met Mary Simon,” said Natan Obed, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, a national organization that represents 65,000 Inuit across Inuit Nunangat—Inuit homelands in Canada. He describes Simon as a leader with “a certain kind of power” rooted in grace, empathy, and presence. “She has been confident and poised in the face of colonial racism and the attitudes that Canadian politicians, including prime ministers of the day, had towards Indigenous peoples and especially Indigenous women,” said Obed.

That’s who Justin Trudeau called and asked to come to the other side of the table and help—as the Crown’s representative—his nation atone for its sins. Standing in the same room where she out-debated and out-negotiated prime ministers, the new governor general introduced herself in her mother tongue, a language where soft consonants catch supple vowels in the palate. “I was born Mary Jeannie May in Arctic Quebec, now known as Nunavik. My Inuk name is Ningiukudluk,” declared Her Excellency, who wore a stately black dress adorned with elegant floral designs beaded by Inuk artist Julie Grenier. Floral patterns and beads both arrived with the French in North America, where Indigenous peoples made them into enduring art. Then she looked at Trudeau. “And, prime minister, it means ‘bossy little old lady.’”

RIDEAU HALL, the governor general’s residence in Ottawa, is effectively a modest English-style palace. Fanning out across almost eighty acres in the affluent New Edinburgh neighbourhood, the estate is larger than some of the tracts of reserve land held by my First Nation, the Canim Lake Band, where houses are scarce and unpalatial. At Rideau Hall, there’s a rose garden, a cricket pitch, and, of course, an outdoor hockey rink in the winter. The hall is named after the nearby canal built to help fortify Canada against the threat of American invasion after the War of 1812. The walkway up to the Queen’s Entrance on the west side of the grounds is lined with trees and art. One piece, in particular, caught my eye—a carved cedar pole depicting a man holding a salmon above the two-headed serpent known as sisiutl and topped by a thunderbird, the mythic avian who shoots lightning from his eyes, flaps thunder from his wings, and fishes whales from the sea. The piece was carved by Mungo Martin, the Kwakwaka’wakw Michelangelo who played a leading role in the twentieth-century renaissance of Northwest Coast art. With its imperial history and Indigenous treasures, Rideau Hall feels like the setting for a Get Out-style Indigenous psychological horror film. It’s spooky.

Queen Elizabeth II had died a week before I visited. Her body lay in state on the other side of the Atlantic, in London’s Westminster Hall. At Rideau Hall, Canadians were encouraged to come and pay their respects, but few did. In front of the hall, there was a place to leave flowers and a book where mourners could pen their well wishes for the deceased monarch more than 5,000 kilometres away. My people travel great distances for funerals. After a death, we sit with the bodies of our kin for four days. A big wake is a sign of honour and respect. But as I approached the Queen’s Entrance, the grounds of the Crown’s Ottawa estate felt vast and empty. An Ipsos poll taken after the queen’s death found that 54 percent of Canadians believed their nation should sever formal ties with the monarchy. Anti-Crown sentiment has grown 10 percent since 2011, according to the research firm. Though I count myself among this growing disaffected majority, I still signed Her Majesty’s condolence book. “Me7 yecwmenstsut-k Kukpi7 Elizabeth,” I wrote in a language the Crown tried to scrub from my kyé7e’s tongue. It means: “You take care, Queen (Chief) Elizabeth.”

As I was departing, I spotted two men wearing Métis woven sashes and black vests beaded with golden vines of pastel-coloured flowers. The elder was Clément Chartier, ambassador of the Manitoba Métis Federation and someone who had advocated alongside Simon for the constitutional protection of Indigenous rights. Chartier was accompanied by Will Goodon, a cabinet minister of the Manitoba Métis. I asked the men if they were there to mourn the queen. “Us?” responded Chartier. “She stole our land!”

He was only half joking. The 1870 Manitoba Act promised Métis land on their native Red River. But the Crown reneged. In 1873 and 1874, Parliament revised the Manitoba Act eleven times to make it more difficult for Métis to exercise legal claims to land. Many Métis were also illiterate, making them more likely to fall through the cracks in nineteenth-century frontier bureaucracy and become targets for con men. The dispossession of Métis led to the North-West Resistance, during which Louis Riel, a Métis leader, founder of Manitoba, and Catholic revisionist prophet, led his people in an armed uprising against Canada. Riel’s people didn’t get their land back, but over time, Manitoba Métis land claims slogged their way through the judiciary. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had not lived up to the honour of the Crown. Despite that, the Manitoba Métis are still without their land. 

In his years as president of the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan, Chartier refused to attend events hosted by the governor general. In his younger years, he was a rabble rouser. He knew Secwépemc Chief George Manuel, the second president of the National Indian Brotherhood, and says he was close to George’s activist son, Art. This was the heyday of the Red Power movement for native sovereignty. In 1973, a young Chartier and Art Manuel occupied the Department of Indian Affairs building in Ottawa for twenty-four hours. But like George Manuel, who accepted the Order of Canada from the governor general before his death, Chartier eventually came around to the benefits of working with the Crown. In the 2000s, he met with Michaëlle Jean, a Haitian Canadian who was the first Black governor general. In 2009, the then governor general hosted an event at Rideau Hall to inaugurate the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A few years after that, Chartier met the queen. “As I went along, I started feeling more a part of Canada and realized, if we were going to make headway, we would have to participate in these institutions,” Chartier explained. “The governor general is part of that.”

Though Indigenous peoples were mistreated by the Crown, a divorce from the monarchy would throw our rights into legal limbo.

Goodon, who is from the Turtle Mountains in Manitoba, respects Chartier’s more accommodating view but questions the need for the monarchy. He remembers how his father, a trapper who worked and lived in the bush, had to pay the Crown royalties for his pelts. National boundaries negotiated by faraway representatives of the Crown disrupted Métis life on the land. “What is the purpose of it?” he asked, rhetorically, of the monarchy. “I don’t know how it’s compatible with actual tenets of democracy.”

These are the tensions at the heart of Indigenous–Crown relations. On the one hand, laws like the Royal Proclamation of 1763 as well as treaties and land claims negotiated with the Crown (and often not with the Canadian government of the day) are the basis for Indigenous rights and title in Canadian law. In fact, the Royal Proclamation issued by King George III is sometimes called the Indian Magna Carta. But the taking of land, children, and human life was also carried out in the name of the Crown. The central premise of reconciliation is that these wrongs, which played out across centuries and a continent, and which Canada’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission deemed a “cultural genocide,” can be made right. But reasonable people might ask whether the Crown has ever had any honour and whether an institution that is definitionally undemocratic and imperial can meaningfully decolonize.

These are intractable questions. It would be challenging, if not impossible, for Canada to sever ties with the Crown. The House of Commons, Senate, all ten provinces, and hundreds of Indigenous communities would each have to give their consent for such a break. And of these parties, First Nations would likely be the hardest to convince. Though Indigenous peoples were mistreated by the Crown, a divorce from the monarchy would throw our rights into legal limbo. After the passing of the queen, the Assembly of First Nations, the national body representing Indian bands like my own, expressed condolences to the royal family and reiterated the value we place on the “sacred Treaty relationship with the British Crown.” While decolonization elsewhere meant colonists had to give up their colonies and colonial institutions, in Canada, the Crown and Indigenous peoples are stuck with one another.

The appointment of the first Indigenous governor general has deepened these colonial entanglements. “It is both wonderful and confusing,” Obed told me when we met at his office in downtown Ottawa. “It is such a great thing to have optimism and hope, especially in a party that has wronged you. But, at the same time, there is that other side of it where there is justifiable anger towards these institutions.”

It feels like a trap. On the one hand, of course you should go into the broken institution that harms our people and fix it. On the other hand, it’s a broken institution that harms our people.

THE SHORTWAVE RADIO buzzed and crackled as Jeannie Angnatuk twisted the dial to try to bring in the station. As we learn from Simon’s selected lectures, Inuit: One Future—One Arctic, Jeannie was her maternal grandmother. Simon carries her first name as a middle name. The radio belonged to Bob May, Simon’s father, the manager of the local Hudson’s Bay Company trading post. Though they lived in a tent deep in the bush near the Koksoak River, which drains into Ungava Bay on the north shore of Quebec, Angnatuk could sometimes catch the BBC. The static dimmed and the broadcast came in. I imagine Angnatuk recognized the familiar sound of Inuit music immediately: singing, likely accompanied by the hollow tik-tik, tik-tik of a stick on the wooden frame of a qilaut (drum). Maybe it was a song about migrating geese or a successful caribou hunt, or maybe it was a simple lullaby. Whatever it was, it was beautiful.

Angnatuk called outside to her grandchildren, the offspring of Bob May and Nancy Angnatuk-Askew. Simon was the oldest of four girls and the second oldest of eight siblings. Her grandmother taught them about Inuit culture and history. Simon knew to heed her call. “You have to listen to this,” Angnatuk told her family in Inuktitut as they huddled around the radio. “These are our relatives who live in faraway lands.” The singers came from a place called Akukituk, the Inuktitut word for Greenland. Inuit were all one people, explained Angnatuk, and they were going to be united someday.

About 1,000 years ago, the ancestors of Inuit spread out across the Arctic. They travelled by the stars, fished Arctic char with three-pronged spears called kakivak, and hunted walrus, seals, polar bears, and even bowhead whales, which can weigh as much as 54.4 tonnes, with bows, spears, and harpoons. They designed some of the warmest clothes in the world and perfected the kayak. Eventually, they reached Greenland, where they discovered the Vikings. The Vikings called Inuit “skraeling,” or “wretched,” same as the other natives they encountered. Norse and Inuit coexisted for centuries, possibly until the medieval warm period ended, but the former’s culture was not as well suited to the cold as that of Inuit. Most begin the story of colonization with Columbus in 1492, but in the first encounter between colonists and Indigenous peoples on the North American continent, it was actually Inuit who prevailed and Europeans who mysteriously disappeared, by 1450. Years later, Simon would say it was her grandmother’s dream, inspired by the voices of Greenlandic Inuit, that inspired her own work. 

Simon was born in 1947 in Kangiqsualujjuaq, Quebec. Bob and Nancy raised their children with Jeannie in what was then Fort-Chimo and is now Kuujjuaq, Quebec. It was a time of immense change. Though Inuit had encountered qallunaat centuries before, colonization came late. “The modern world arrived slowly in some places in the world, and quickly in others. But in the Arctic, it appeared in a single generation,” writes Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuk activist and author also from Kuujjuaq, in The Right to Be Cold. “In a sense, Inuit of my generation have lived in both the ice age and the space age.”

In 1939, the Supreme Court ruled that Inuit were to be classified as “Indians” under the Constitution and should therefore come under Canadian jurisdiction. During World War II, the United States Air Force built bases on Inuit land in Kuujjuaq (Fort-Chimo), Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay), and Paallavvik (Padloping Island). These were used as pit stops for planes en route to Europe. It was also during World War II that the Canadian government created the disc number identification system. Simon’s number was E9-761: “E” meant she was from the east of Gjoa Haven, “9” meant she was from northern Quebec, and “761” was her personal number. The discs and numbers were discontinued in the 1970s, after Inuit adopted last names through a government program called Project Surname.

The Crown came north too. Simon recalls her grandmother owned a picture of the queen and talked about the monarch with her friends. “I remember how much she was revered,” said the governor general. Despite Angnatuk’s fondness for the queen, subjugation of the Arctic to Crown law was one of the most harrowing eras in Inuit history. “In the period leading up to the 1960s and 1970s, the relationship between the Europeans and Inuit was a grossly one-sided one,” wrote Simon in an article for International Journal. “We Inuit suffered a steady loss of control over our ability to make decisions—decisions for ourselves and for the lands and waters that have sustained us for thousands of years. We became a colonized people.”

In an interview with Up Here magazine, Simon remembered walking to school with her friends—skipping, laughing, fighting with the boys, and chatting in Inuktitut. But when they approached campus, one of them would say, “Stop talking!” And they’d fall silent—no Inuktitut, no English. Inuit have a word for the feeling the children had: ilira—a “mix of apprehension and fear that causes a suppression of opinion and voice,” explains Hugh Brody in The Other Side of Eden. “When southerners told Inuit to do things that were against Inuit tradition, or related to the things that qallunaat wanted from the North, Inuit felt that they had to say yes. They felt too much ilira to say no.”

After grade six, Inuit children from Kuujjuaq were taken away to a residential school in Churchill, Manitoba. But not Simon—her father was white. Nancy and Bob’s children, the only Inuit kids left in their village, were homeschooled. Simon remembered when crying adults, after church on Sundays, would hug her and her brothers and sisters hard because their own babies were gone. “They missed their children so much that they almost treated us like we were their children,” Simon told Up Here. “The winters were long and lonely.”

Children weren’t the only ones taken from their homes. In the 1950s, Canada relocated Inuit to settlements. Two of the most infamous relocations took place in 1953 and 1955, when Canada removed Inuit from Inukjuak in northern Quebec and Pond Inlet on Baffin Island to two High Arctic settlements: one at Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island and another near the military base at Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island. The official reason for this forced migration was humanitarian. Inuit in Inukjuak, according to the government, were overpopulated and dependent on welfare. But according to Inuit, relocated families were coerced into leaving. In the High Arctic, they served as “human flagpoles” buffering Canadian sovereignty during the Cold War. There, they suffered. Communities splintered, with wedges driven between families and generations. They struggled to adjust to the long, dark winters and short summers. Their deep knowledge of the Inukjuak ecosystem didn’t translate to the scant flora and fauna of Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay. Some contracted tuberculosis. Others nearly starved. 

By the 1960s, most Inuit were living in settlements. But removal and resettlement did not put an end to what the Canadian government had come to call the “Eskimo Problem.” Inuit relied on sled dogs for hunting and transportation. A good sled dog could find its way home in a storm. Dogs were known to dig out igloos buried in winter and pull fallen hunters out of broken sea ice. “The husky dogs allow us to be at peace with ourselves, providing us with the ability to provide food for our families, and knowing that they will alert us if there is any danger,” said a hunter in the documentary Echo of the Last Howl. “Those dogs are the best lifeguards.” 

In the 1950s and ’60s, according to Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to Be Cold, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and government officials travelled the region hunting for Inuit dog teams. The Mounties claimed that many were infected with canine distemper and had turned violent. The dogs were confiscated and sent south for so-called health care. They were never seen again. More often, hunters were told to bring their dogs to a specific area, where the animals were immediately shot by police. “In some instances,” writes Watt-Cloutier, “the carcasses were thrown in piles and burned. All this happened in view of their shocked owners.” This slaughter deprived Inuit of the mobility that was the basis of their livelihood. Inuit culture transformed rapidly as a cash economy replaced the traditional one. Without their children, dogs, and way of life, many turned to alcohol.

To survive, Inuit had to learn to live in Inuit and qallunaat worlds—ice age and space age—simultaneously. Simon, a child of both, was exceptionally good at cultural time and space travel. “She was truly raised in two worlds,” her husband, Whit Fraser, told me. He recalls sitting around the table with Mary and her parents, Bob and Nancy. “The languages would shift depending on who was the centre of the conversation or who was speaking,” he said. “Inuktitut between Bob and Nancy. Inuktitut between Nancy and her mother. English between her and her father. English with me. English with me and her mother and father. And that worked. I don’t understand Inuktitut, and I certainly don’t speak it. But I never felt left out of the conversation.”

Sometimes it seems as though Inuit are being punished for holding on to their language. After Simon was announced governor general, French Canadians complained she couldn’t speak French. The day school Simon attended in Kuujjuaq didn’t teach it. Though the governor general is bilingual in English and Inuktitut, one of the first, original, and oldest languages of this land, that wasn’t good enough for some French Canadians. Hundreds penned formal complaints about Simon’s appointment to the commissioner of official languages, who opened an investigation. A lawsuit has even been filed.

As the governor general has no policy-making privileges, her influence over reconciliation relies on her ability to connect heads of state and government with Indigenous peoples—to navigate conversations about and across painful histories that are still being unearthed. Simon has lived those realities and navigated those difficult conversations her entire life. “The path to reconciliation is really about talking to one another,” Simon told me, in an interview, of her decision to take the governor general’s job. “Having the conversations. Telling each other our own stories. And also to talk about what’s been happening in Canada in regards to Indigenous peoples. Because many, many Canadians don’t know.”

MARY SIMON SAT in the dark boardroom of a Montreal skyscraper with that feeling of ilira creeping up in her chest. These were the offices of the James Bay Energy Corporation, a subsidiary of Hydro-Québec that was building one of the largest hydro-electric dams in the world—on Inuit and Cree land in northern Quebec. The James Bay Project, as it was called, was announced by Quebec premier Robert Bourassa in 1971. It would divert or dam several rivers and construct eight generating stations in northern Quebec. One generating station, named after Bourassa, would create a man-made waterfall taller than Niagara Falls. Designed to fulfill a campaign promise, the James Bay Project would produce thousands of jobs and enough power for Quebec to begin exporting energy to the United States. But as a consequence, an area about the size of Jamaica would be submerged. Inuit and Cree who lived on that land were not consulted before construction began. In 1973, a Superior Court judge granted these Inuit and Cree an injunction, but the James Bay Energy Corporation appealed. So as they sat across the table from provincial negotiators, construction on the James Bay Project continued. “We were a rag-tag, poorly funded group of Inuit and Cree up against governments and very powerful industrial interests,” Simon later recalled.

Just a few years earlier, in 1969, the same year prime minister Pierre Trudeau published a white paper proposing to abolish the Indian Act to permanently assimilate Indigenous peoples, Simon took a job with the CBC Northern Service. She produced radio and TV programs in Inuktitut, wrote for Inuit Today magazine, and learned about the James Bay Project. These were the early days of the Inuit movement and the heyday of the American Indian Movement when diasporic Inuit from different regions came together for the first time. Like other Indigenous peoples, Inuit often gathered in cities far from their homelands. They would discuss political strategies to protect and reclaim their rights, culture, and land, over traditional foods. Frozen, but more often dried, caribou, fish, and seal from the north would be laid out on cardboard in the middle of the room. Attendees would cut a hunk, usually with one shared semicircular knife called an ulu. 

At meetings of this budding brotherhood, Simon stood out. “Mary was part of that group of Inuit who were forging the path towards Inuit being recognized as their own distinctive group of Aboriginal peoples in Canada,” recalled Nancy Karetak-Lindell, a former member of Parliament representing Nunavut. “She was one of the very few women in leadership at that time, which didn’t go unnoticed by young women who were watching all of this.” 

Simon played a role negotiating the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement signed in 1975. She later described these negotiations as her “first real experience” working on Indigenous rights. The agreement recognized that Inuit and Cree should at least have some say in economic development on lands they had never legally relinquished. It affirmed their rights to hunt, trap, fish, and self-govern in the James Bay region. But it also extinguished their legal title to the territory. In exchange, Quebec agreed to pay $225 million to support Inuit and Cree education, social services, and economic development over twenty years. Three Indigenous-owned corporations were created to manage the settlement money. Thus, the Northern Quebec Inuit Association became a corporation called Makivik, which means “to rise up.” Watt-Cloutier writes about a member of the negotiating team who later compared the agreement to an old tale about six hunters who can’t find any game and have to eat the leftovers of a picky snowy owl. “Our trying to get legal concepts and legal rights recognized by the government is often like the snowy owl—we often have to eat what he won’t eat, and we have to make do with that. But, hopefully, that will give us enough energy to go on with the hunt.”

In the Inuit hunt for rights, Simon’s responsibilities were growing. Elected secretary of the Northern Quebec Inuit Association in 1976, she presided over the implementation of the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement as vice president of Makivik from 1979 to 1982 and then as president from 1982 to 1985. Those were the same years that she advocated for the recognition of Indigenous rights in the Constitution as a member of the Inuit Committee on National Issues. She later played a prominent role in the negotiation of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, which pushed further constitutional reforms. During the Charlottetown Accord negotiations, Simon was one of a trio of Indigenous women dubbed the “Mothers of Confederation,” in part because the accord codified the Indigenous right to self-government. A referendum on the Charlottetown Accord in 1992 was defeated by a coalition that included former prime minister Pierre Trudeau as well as voters in Quebec and the western provinces. In the Northwest Territories, home to many Inuit, a majority of voters approved the referendum. Canada has not attempted constitutional reform since. But in 1993, Inuit won the largest land claim in Canadian history and created their own self-governing territory anyway: Nunavut.

In a span of less than thirty years, Inuit wrestled power away from qallunaat and transformed how their lands—fully one-third of the country—are governed. Simon’s rise coincided with that history, but her political genius came into its own when she led not just Inuit but all Indigenous peoples to new heights.

MARY SIMON WALKED into the meeting in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and began looking for the placard indicating her seat. According to Fraser’s memoir, True North Rising, space had been set in that sterile way hotel conference rooms are done up: clothed tables arranged in a rectangle so that diplomats and negotiators can converse as equals—eye to eye, nation to nation, sovereign to sovereign. The year was 1990. Simon was president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an international body representing about 160,000 Inuit in Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka (Russia). In 1977, the council was formed as “a means of ensuring protection of Inuit culture and the Arctic’s resources,” writes Simon in her book Inuit: One Future—One Arctic. In 1986, Simon was tapped to lead the organization.

The purpose of the 1990 meeting was to negotiate the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, an agreement among nations with territory in the Arctic Circle to monitor and protect the Arctic environment as well as its flora and fauna from global warming, pollutants, and waste. If you were to look at the globe from the north, you would see that Inuit Nunangat, Greenland, Chukotka, and Alaska form a sort of half crescent around the Arctic Ocean—or, as some oceanographers call it, the “Arctic Mediterranean.” In this northern sea world, an archipelago of ninety-four major islands and more than 35,000 minor ones, Inuit are the dominant population in all but Chukotka. And yet, at the table of nations making decisions about the future of the Arctic, no Inuit had a seat.

The United States’ lead negotiator, ambassador R. Rucker Scully, made it clear that the Americans wanted only “sovereign” nations at the table. He told Simon that she was not a participant in the Yellowknife meeting, merely a presenter. Because she was not a diplomat from one of the five member nations of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy Group, she would have no seat. 

For Simon and the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, this would not do. She marched out of the meeting and into the lobby and gave waiting reporters a story: “Arctic Inuit Not Welcome at Arctic Conference.” Canadian bureaucrats, who did not want to appear prejudiced, scrambled to get Simon away from the journalists’ cameras, notebooks, and recorders. With the leverage created by the bad press, a new set of negotiations began, with the member nations attempting to placate Simon and the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Simon and Inuit had, by then, already reformed Canadian sovereignty to accommodate Indigenous peoples. Now they were aiming to do the same to the international order.

In 1994, prime minister Jean Chrétien appointed Simon as Canada’s first ambassador for circumpolar affairs. In that role, she was tasked with helping bring together an eight-country group now known as the Arctic Council. In Ottawa, in 1996, Simon negotiated seats on the Arctic Council for Indigenous peoples as “permanent participants.” The designation gives Indigenous peoples less leverage than a member state but more than a non-Arctic observer state (such as China, Germany, or the United Kingdom), creating an entirely new framework for Indigenous influence over international policy making and politics.

As permanent participants, Indigenous organizations have submitted proposals and consulted with voting member states to ensure Indigenous rights and Indigenous knowledge are included and respected in international agreements across a wide range of issues, from conservation to shipping corridors and free trade agreements. “Permanent participants were able to sit at the table with the senior Arctic officials and the ministers and to have the dialogue that is absolutely necessary for consensus building,” Simon later said. “We couldn’t go much further than that. So we agreed to this status.” The six Indigenous organizations on the Arctic Council remain the only Indigenous peoples with a say in any international body. This might sound like little more than a clerical change, but it’s not. In the Arctic, which comprises 4 percent of the Earth’s surface, Indigenous peoples have a seat at the table of nations.

In True North Rising, Fraser recalls attending a formal dinner in Washington, DC, as chair of the Canadian Polar Commission. He was seated next to an American diplomat who worked for Scully, and the two men were getting along just fine. Then, out of the blue, the American said, “Tell me, Whit, there is this very difficult Inuit woman, Mary Simon. Do you know her?”

The woman sitting on the other side of Fraser nearly choked on her food. Her name was Marianne Stenbaek. A McGill University professor, Stenbaek was one of Mary Simon’s best friends. “I do know her,” replied Fraser, not missing a beat. “Very well, in fact, and you are right, she can be very headstrong.”

MY PEOPLE, the Secwepemc and St’át’imc nations from what is now British Columbia, are quite Catholic. We baptize our children, eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, and sing hymns in our Salish tongue. Though we don’t often speak of Coyote, the trickster from whom we are descended, we still cause trouble, like he did, from time to time. In the 1990s, for example, activists from our nations put their bodies in the paths of trucks hauling the last old-growth trees out of our forests. The St’át’imc, my grandfather’s people, composed a song back in those days. It goes: “Hey-ya-ho, hey-ya hey-yo. Canada is all Indian land!” That’s the song protesters sang to shame Justin Trudeau when he arrived at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in May 2022 to mark the end of a year of mourning for the dead children hidden in the former school’s apple orchard. 

And maybe Trudeau deserved it. Though many of us are Catholic Indians, the Secwepemc still practise our traditional funerary and mourning rites. These last a year, during which we do not hunt, fish, or harvest our traditional foods. We put away all photographs of the dead. Long ago, we would not even speak the dead’s name. After that year, we return to the grave. We give away the deceased’s belongings. And, often, we feast and play a traditional gambling game, lahal. Though he had been invited to Kamloops for the first ever National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, Trudeau observed the holiday commemorating the genocide of our children by taking his family on vacation. So when it was the prime minister’s turn to speak to survivors and descendants in Kamloops, he was heckled. The task of delivering a meaningful eulogy on behalf of Canada fell to Mary Simon. 

Though she has served for less than two years, Simon has represented the Crown during one of the most tumultuous eras in its history. There was a pandemic and then a backlash against the public health measures instituted to contain it, culminating in an attempted takeover of Ottawa by a convoy of truckers. There was a federal election, a visit from the pope who apologized to residential school survivors, and the death of the queen. There were, in other words, many turning points where the nation might have lost the plot. But that day, Simon wasn’t speaking from a Canadian perspective. She was speaking from an Indigenous one. “Today, we make ourselves heard across the country,” said the governor general. “Although it is hard, we are telling Canadians and the world about our wounds and pain.”

The governor general, like her people, has persisted against immense unfairness and indignity. Though Inuit have beaten qallunaat at their own game at the local, territorial, provincial, national, and international levels, Inuit have not escaped the death trap of colonization. Today the Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world. While the United Nations considers global warming of two degrees to be potentially catastrophic, average temperatures in the past century have already risen by two or more degrees in some parts of the Arctic. Warmer temperatures thin the ice, making it dangerous to hunt. They soften the snow, making it difficult to build igloos. They make the game smaller and scarcer. And they change animal behaviours and migration routes, rendering knowledge built over generations of observation useless. Though Inuit have produced almost none of the emissions now heating the planet, the cold environment that makes them who they are is melting—a portent for the rest of us. 

And yet I wouldn’t bet against the first peoples of the far north. They long outlasted the first colonists they met. Their children were taken. Their dogs were shot. They were relocated. Their lands were flooded. And they were told repeatedly they had no place nor claim in the courts, negotiating rooms, or parliaments where decisions about their lives were made for them. And yet, time and again, they figured out how to make themselves heard. And then Mary Simon got them to the head of the table. Monarchs die. Empires fall. The Vikings are long gone. The Soviet, French, and British empires too. And here Inuit are, still gathering over the bounty of their lands and waters, telling stories of heroic leaders like Simon as they plot out the next ways they’re going to outfox qallunaat. That’s how it’s been the past fifty years. That’s likely how it will be for the next fifty. And who is to say that tradition—the tradition of the qulliq, not the Crown—won’t carry on long into the future?

Simon might be the representative of an office rooted in Canadian and British imperialism. But she rose to that office through an Inuit political tradition that successfully combatted imperialism and transformed Canadian sovereignty and the international order in a remarkably short time frame—in no small part, because of her. Most people have no clue that Indigenous peoples even have political traditions. To my knowledge, few, if any, political science departments in the world bother to study this history and look at these questions that way. But those interested in winning power for the Indigenous and colonized world would be wise to know the story of Simon and her people. 

“There is a word in Inuktitut, my mother tongue: Ajuinnata,” said Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon as she brought her eulogy in Kamloops to a close. “It means to never give up, to keep going, no matter how difficult the cause may be. You never gave up. You continued to tell your stories—continued to tell these children’s stories. Together you confront this painful past. Together, you will make sure these children are brought home. And together we will continue building a better future for Indigenous peoples.” 

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Julian Brave NoiseCat, writer and filmmaker, is a visiting fellow of the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan and a fellow of the Type Media Center.

Harry Daniels, Chief Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier and Jose Kusugak to be commemorated in upcoming stamp set

NationTalk: OTTAWA – On June 21 – National Indigenous Peoples Day – Canada Post will issue a new set of stamps to pay tribute to the lives and legacies of three Indigenous leaders. Harry Daniels, Chief Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier and Jose Kusugak will each be featured on a stamp in recognition of their incredible commitment and contributions to strengthening the Métis, First Nations and Inuit communities they served.

The upcoming stamp set is the inaugural release in Canada Post’s new Indigenous Leaders stamp series. Prior to issuing the set on June 21, the stamps will each be unveiled at local events in Regina and Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, and Rankin Inlet, Nunavut.

Harry Daniels stamp unveiling event: June 13, 11 am, Regina, Sask.

Harry Daniels (1940-2004) was a politician, activist, writer and actor who dedicated his life to the rights and well-being of Métis and non-status Indians in Canada. Among his most important contributions was ensuring their inherent rights as Indigenous Peoples by lobbying to have them included as one of the Indigenous Peoples recognized in the Constitution Act, 1982, and recognized as “Indians” under the British North America Act, 1867. In March 2004, he was awarded the Order of the Métis Nation by the Métis National Council.

Jose Kusugak stamp unveiling event: June 14, 6 pm, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut

Jose Kusugak (1950-2011) was an Inuit activist, linguist and broadcaster who played a critical role in the efforts that led to the creation of Nunavut in 1999 – for which many consider him a Father of Confederation. He dedicated his life to raising awareness of Inuit identity and issues in Canada, as well as promoting and preserving Inuit language and culture, and coined the phrase “First Canadians, Canadians First” to describe his people. Kusugak was also part of the first generation of Inuit children who were sent to residential schools.

Chief Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier stamp unveiling: June 15, 2 pm, Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask.

Chief Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier (b. 1954) spent nearly 40 years as leader of the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan – the most consecutive terms ever served by an elected First Nations chief in Canada. She led several projects related to education, wellness and social reform, while also working to preserve the culture, language and traditions of her people. In 2018, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. This spring, she was in the Indigenous delegation that met with Pope Francis at the Vatican to discuss the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system, of which she is a survivor.

Stamps and collectibles will be available at canadapost.ca and postal outlets across Canada starting June 21.

ANISHINABEK NATION HEAD OFFICE (June 6, 2022) – The Anishinabek Nation celebrates the inaugural June 6 Anishinabek Nation holiday, Anishinaabe Giizhigad, in honour of the historic proclamation of the Anishinaabe Chi-Naaknigewin (constitution).

“Today, we recognize June 6 as a day of great historical significance for the Anishinabek Nation, member First Nations, and citizens, and is cause for celebration across the Nation,” states Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe. “It is a day where we remember and acknowledge the assertion of our sovereignty and responsibilities that are foremost guided by the Seven Grandfather Teachings. It is a day where we celebrate Anishinabek and the resiliency of our people who have survived decades of assimilation and racism. Our beautiful culture, traditions, and people will continue on for generations to come. We encourage our E’Dbendaagzijig to join in on this wonderful day today and on every June 6 to come!”

The Anishinaabe Chi-Naaknigewin was ratified by the Anishinabek Nation Grand Council by Grand Council Resolution and confirmed by a Pipe Ceremony in Sheguiandah First Nation on June 6, 2012. The Anishinaabe Chi-Naaknigewin is a commitment to live by Anishinaabe law.

The Anishinaabe Chi-Naaknigewin was developed in consultation with Anishinabek First Nations leaders and citizens over the course of 13 years. Throughout this period, the consultation process was led by former Anishinabek Nation Head Getzit Mishomis Gordon Waindubence (Shiikenh)-baa, and included Dodemaag (Clan) teachings and principles of traditional governance.

In 2011, the Anishinaabe Chi-Naaknigewin Preamble, Ngo Dwe Waangizid Anishinaabe (One Anishinaabe Family), was approved by the Chiefs-in-Assembly. The Preamble contains instructions on how to live according to the Laws the Creator has given to the Anishinaabe. Mishomis Gordon Waindubence-baa sat with an Elders Council to create the Ngo Dwe Waangizid Anishinaabe, which provides the context, spirit, and intent in which the Anishinaabe Chi-Naaknigewin is understood.

The Anishinabek Nation Executive Leadership proclaimed the new holiday in November 2021.

The Anishinabek Nation is a political advocate for 39 member First Nations across Ontario, representing approximately 65,000 citizens. The Anishinabek Nation is the oldest political organization in Ontario and can trace its roots back to the Confederacy of Three Fires, which existed long before European contact.

APTN News:

Murray Sinclair received the Order of Canada Thursday for dedicating his life to championing Indigenous Peoples’ rights and freedoms. Sinclair held his wife’s hand as the award was announced in Rideau Hall, and was met with a standing ovation as he rose to receive it.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon presented Sinclair with the award at the ceremony, which was held several months after it was announced he would receive the honour.

By accepting the award, Sinclair wanted to show the country that working on Indigenous issues calls for national attention and participation, he said in an interview. Sinclair, 71, said at his age he has begun to reflect on his life, and he realizes that he’s had both the joy and sadness that comes with participating in this work. Receiving the award recognizes the importance of that work, and can act as inspiration for younger people, Sinclair said.

“When I speak to young people, I always tell them that we all have a responsibility to do the best that we can and to be the best that we can be,” he said.

Sinclair led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the experiences of Indigenous children sent to residential schools. Sinclair said it was a particular honour to receive the award from Simon, the first Indigenous Governor General, as she is a good friend and was an honorary witness to the commission.

“As an Indigenous person, we had a unique relationship. And I think we brought it to what happened here today,” he said.

The former senator is a highly respected voice on matters of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The Order of Canada is one of the country’s highest distinctions, for those who have made exceptional contributions to Canadian society.

Sinclair also received the Meritorious Service Cross for his role in overseeing the Truth and Reconciliation commission and producing the final report.Report an Error Tell us your Story

Appointment of Mary Simon as Canada’s 30th Governor General since Confederation. Mary Simon (Ningiukudluk) is an Inuk born in Kangisualuujjuaq, Nunavik (Quebec). She is an advocate for Inuit rights and culture inclusion in the Constitution in 1982. Mary Simon’s has dedicated her life to working and advocating for Indigenous peoples. As the first Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs, Ms. Simon played a leading role in strengthening the ties between the people of the Arctic regions nationally and internationally, including through the creation of the Arctic Council.

“Having an Indigenous person as the Crown’s Representative in Canada sends a strong message to the nation, and to the international community. This comes at an important time in our history as we collectively work towards reconciliation.” Pita Aatami, President Makivik Corporation