The fifth ballot win that made RoseAnne Archibald the first ever female national chief of the Assembly of First Nations sealed the Week of Indigenous Women in Canada.
Fittingly, it came only seven days after the wave of soul-searching national angst over residential schools that led to overwrought cancellations of Canada Day in some corners of the country and long-faced looks of self-loathing in others.
At a minimum, Archibald’s triumphant indefatigability in breaking through what’s been decried as the old boys’ club of the AFN turned a certain tweet by the executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association from shocking to utterly fatuous.
Even as the AFN readied itself to vote in the election that brought Archibald to the headship of the national organization that represents 900,000 First Nations people, BCCLA boss Harsha Walia was on Twitter exhorting to “burn it all down” in response to acts of arson and vandalism against churches mainly in B.C. and Alberta.
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Thunder rolls of condemnation from Indigenous leaders such as former senator Murray Sinclair, plus reports of police inquiries into whether the tweet counselled violence against identifiable groups, sparked Walia to illuminate her Twitter intentions. Her tweet was meant “metaphorically,” she insisted. She wanted only to provoke generally setting fire to “it” – that vast pronoun encompassing the entire system of Canadian governance that includes such horrid historical offences as the creation of residential schools.
Right. Burn down the very “it” wherein Archibald could reach such an historic milestone in her 31-year political career.
“Today is a victory and you can tell all the women in your life that the glass ceiling has been broken,” Archibald said after two days of voting ended with a concession by her final opponent, Reginald Bellerose. “I thank all of the women who touched that ceiling before me and made it crack. You are an inspiration to me.”
It’s an inspiration that will doubtless be matched, without anything burning down, by Archibald firing the hopes of hundreds, if not thousands, of young Indigenous women to engage politically for reforms their communities want and need.
Nor need Archibald carry that inspirational responsibility alone. All of us can take great heart in the promise of justice by last week’s appointment of Canada’s first Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon.
Simon’s rich and highly esteemed pedigree in Indigenous and non-Indigenous work, as well as her reputation for graciousness and calm, bode exceptionally well for her transcending any mere figurehead status. They excite a hope that lights the path toward genuine reconciliation.
Nowhere is the paradox of hope more evident than in the decision by former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to leave federal politics rather than run again in an expected late summer or autumn election. Some read her departure as yet another triumph for petty politics or, as one observer said, “laying waste to anyone who crosses you in any way.”
Certainly, Wilson-Raybould crossed a lot of powerful, petty people with her principled stand during the SNC-Lavalin scandal. In her ripsnorter of a published farewell letter, she laid ample blame on the toxicity of internecine politics and the quagmire of adolescent ego jockeying within Parliament. “I have not made this decision in order to spend more time with my family,” she said with characteristic cheeky bluntness.
Consider these words in her fourth from last paragraph: “For me – and for you, too, I believe – it all leads to the same destination: A stronger Canada and a place we can all proudly call home. A continuation of the work required to build the most diverse and welcoming country in the world with the most stable, accountable, and efficient government.”
Consider the hopefulness of those words coming from an Indigenous woman who has been obliged to fight for what she has achieved and who now sees her achievements mirrored in the achievements of two Indigenous sisters, who sees those achievements pointing toward a place where the horrid wrongs of the past are recognized and reconciled so we can all proudly call it home.
Burn it all down?
Nah. Let’s try something else instead. Let’s celebrate the Week of Indigenous Women. And then stretch it out for a year. And then for all the years to come.
Peter Stockland, senior writer at the think-tank Cardus and editor of Convivium.ca.
Peter is a Troy Media Thought Leader. For interview requests, click here.
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