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Trudeau Appoints Mary Simon Canada’s First Indigenous Governor Normal

Trudeau Appoints Mary Simon Canada’s First Indigenous Governor General

MONTREAL — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Canada’s first Indigenous governor general on Tuesday, a seminal moment as the country seeks to reconcile with its Indigenous population after decades of systemic mistreatment.

As governor general, the appointee, Mary Simon, a diplomat and leading Indigenous rights advocate, will represent Queen Elizabeth II as Canada’s official head of state. While the role is largely ceremonial, it is high profile and has wide symbolic resonance in a country where the governor general is the crown’s representative in Canada’s system of constitutional monarchy.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada called the appointment a significant moment. “Today after 154 years, our country takes a historic step,” he said at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. “I cannot think of a better person to meet the moment.”

The appointment of Ms. Simon, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Denmark, comes as Canada is reeling, following the discovery of hundreds of unmarked Indigenous graves, many of them children, who attended church-run schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

The finding of the graves has spurred national soul searching about the country’s discrimination against Indigenous people, who for decades have been forced to grapple with racism, inadequate access to health and economic opportunities and lack of autonomy.

The appointment follows the resignation of Julie Payette, who stepped down in January after months of media reports that she and a top adviser had belittled and publicly humiliated employees, often reducing them to tears. In response, the government commissioned an independent review that several Canadian news outlets said had blamed her for fomenting a toxic work environment.

Ms. Simon, an Inuk from Kuujjuaq, a village in northeastern Quebec, said on Tuesday that her appointment would help engender reconciliation.

“I can confidently say that my appointment is a historic and inspirational moment for Canada and an important step forward,” she said. “Indeed, my appointment comes at an especially reflective and dynamic time in our shared history.”

Indigenous leaders welcomed the appointment, calling Ms. Simon a skilled diplomat who was well placed to champion Indigenous concerns and act as a mediator between disparate groups.

Perry Bellegarde, the president of the Assembly of First Nations, a national organization representing Indigenous people, praised the appointment. “Mary is a diplomat, an advocate and a strong Inuk Woman,” he wrote on Twitter.

Vjosa Isai contributed reporting from Toronto.

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Health

Coaching the Subsequent Era of Indigenous Information Scientists

Training the Next Generation of Indigenous Data Scientists

“Native DNA is so sought after that people are looking for proxy data, and one of the big proxy data is the microbiome,” said Yracheta. “If you are a Native, you need to consider all of these variables if you are to protect your people and culture.”

In a presentation at the conference, Joslynn Lee, a member of the Navajo, Laguna Pueblo and Acoma Pueblo Nations and a biochemist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, shared her experience of tracking changes in microbial communities in rivers that drained mine wastewater Silverton, Colorado, discontinued. Dr. Lee also provided practical tips on planning a microbial analysis, from taking a sample to processing it.

Rebecca Pollet, a biochemist and member of the Cherokee Nation, took a data science career panel on how many mainstream pharmaceuticals were developed based on traditional knowledge and plant medicine of the indigenous people. The anti-malarial drug quinine, for example, was developed from the bark of a species of cinchona that the Quechua people used as medicine in the past. Dr. Pollet, who studies the effects of drugs and traditional foods on the gut microbiome, asked, “How do we honor this traditional knowledge and compensate for what has been covered up?”

One participant, Lakota Elder Les Ducheneaux, added that he believed that medicine derived from traditional knowledge mistakenly removed the prayers and rituals that traditionally accompanied treatment, making the medicine less effective. “You have to constantly balance the scientific part of medicine with the cultural and spiritual part of your job,” he said.

During the IndigiData conference, attendees also discussed ways to manage their own data to serve their communities.

Mason Grimshaw, data scientist and board member of Indigenous in AI, spoke about his research on language data at the International Wakashan AI Consortium. The consortium, led by engineer Michael Running Wolf, is developing automatic speech recognition AI for Wakashan languages, a family of endangered languages ​​spoken by multiple First Nations communities. The researchers believe that automatic speech recognition models can preserve the fluency of the Wakashan languages ​​and revive their use by future generations.

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World News

Lots of Extra Unmarked Graves of Indigenous Kids Present in Canada

Hundreds More Unmarked Graves of Indigenous Children Found in Canada

CALGARY, Alberta – The remains of 761 people, mostly indigenous children, were discovered on the grounds of a former school in Saskatchewan province, a Canadian indigenous group announced Thursday, rocking a nation that has been experiencing widespread and systematic abuse for generations by indigenous people.

The biggest discovery to date came weeks after the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former boarding school in British Columbia.

Both schools were part of a system that took indigenous children in the country, some by force, from their families over a period of around 113 years and placed them in boarding schools, where they were not allowed to speak their language.

A national truth and reconciliation commission established in 2008 to investigate, expose and document the history and consequences of boarding schools called the practice “cultural genocide”. Many children never returned home and their families were given vague or no explanations about their fate. Canada had approximately 150 boarding schools and an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children attended the schools between their opening in 1883 and their closure in 1996.

It is unclear how the children died in the church schools that were ravaged by disease outbreaks a century ago, and where children were exposed to sexual, physical and emotional violence and violence. Some former students of the schools have reported that the bodies of infants of girls who were impregnated by priests and monks were cremated.

The commission estimates that around 4,100 children are missing in schools across the country. But an indigenous former judge who headed the commission, Murray Sinclair, said in an email this month that he now believes the number is “well over 10,000”.

The discovery in Saskatchewan was made by the Cowesss First Nation at the Marieval Indian Residential School, about 87 miles from the provincial capital, Regina.

“There was always talk, speculation, and stories, but seeing that number – it’s a pretty significant number,” said Bobby Cameron, head of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, the provincial association of indigenous groups. “It’s going to be difficult and painful and heartbreaking.”

He added, “This is what the Catholic Church in Canada and the then government of Canada forced upon our children.”

For Canada’s 1.7 million Indigenous citizens, who make up approximately 4.9 percent of the population, the discovery is a haunting reminder of centuries of discrimination and abuse that resulted in intergenerational trauma for boarding school survivors and their families.

It’s also a strong endorsement of their testimonies. While recent evidence has increased awareness of the subject, Indigenous peoples’ oral traditions had indicated for decades that thousands of children had disappeared from schools but were often met with skepticism. “There’s no denying it: all of our survivors’ stories are true,” said Chief Cameron.

The latest evidence is likely to deepen the country’s debate over its history of indigenous peoples exploitation and bring attention back to the horrors of schools, a flaw in the history of Canada, a country that has often, fair or not, been perceived as a bastion of progressivism and multiculturalism.

In September 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged the past “humiliation, neglect and mistreatment” of the country’s indigenous people and vowed to improve the lives of the country’s indigenous people in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. The recent discoveries will put pressure on him to accelerate these efforts, which many indigenous people complain have been neglected.

When Mr. Trudeau took office in 2015, he made the 94 recommendations of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission a top priority. But progress has been slow, in part because some of them are beyond the control of the federal government. The Indian Act, a nineteenth-century set of laws governing the lives of indigenous peoples, remains in place despite Trudeau’s promise to transform it into a new system under their control. Chief Cameron and several other Indigenous leaders hope that discovering the children’s remains will speed the process.

The remains of the 215 children were discovered using ground penetrating radar at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Similar to an MRI scan of the body, the technology creates images of anomalies in the ground.

An official with the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said the latest analysis, based on the same technology, began about three weeks ago, not long after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced preliminary results on the Kamloops School.

The search at Kamloops School continues, and First Nation leaders said they expected the number to continue to spike.

When the commission tried to investigate the issue of missing indigenous children, the then Conservative government rejected its request for funds to fund searches. Since Kamloops was discovered in late May, several Canadian governments have offered to pay for the searches.

On Tuesday, the federal government announced that it would allocate just under $ 4.9 million Canadian dollars (about $ 3.9 million) to indigenous communities in Saskatchewan to search for graves. The provincial government had previously pledged Canadian dollars ($ 1.6 million).

In a statement, Saskatchewan Prime Minister Scott Moe predicted the remains of more children would be found elsewhere. “Unfortunately, other First Nations in Saskatchewan will experience the same shock and despair as the search for graves continues,” he wrote.

Like Kamloops, Marieval School, which opened in 1899, has been run by the Roman Catholic Church for the Canadian government for most of its history. A marked cemetery still exists on the site of the school, which was closed in 1997 and then demolished. The commission, based on testimonials from former students and archive materials, listed the Marieval School as a likely location for unmarked graves.

The commission asked for a papal apology for the role of the church, which ran about 70 percent of the schools. (The rest were led by Protestant denominations.) But despite a personal appeal from Mr. Trudeau to the Vatican, Pope Francis has still not taken this step. In contrast, the leadership of the United Church of Canada, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, apologized in 1986 for its role in running the schools.

Former Saskatchewan residential school students have been particularly active in litigation against the government that led to financial settlements and the establishment of a commission that over six years heard more than 6,700 witnesses testify.

Since the Kamloops announcement, Chief Cameron said he has toured the province where agriculture and mining are major industries and looked at former school sites.

“You can see with the naked eye the indentation in the floor where these corpses can be found,” he said of some places. “These children are sitting there waiting to be found.”

Vjosa Isai contributed to the research.

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World News

Indigenous Social gathering, Not on the Poll, Is Nonetheless a Huge Winner in Ecuador Election

Indigenous Party, Not on the Ballot, Is Still a Big Winner in Ecuador Election

TARQUI, Ecuador – Though its candidate was not elected, one big winner in Ecuador’s presidential election on Sunday was clear before the election result was even announced: the nation’s long-marginalized indigenous movement.

The indigenous party and its allies shook the nation in the first round of elections in February, won half of the states, became the second largest presence in Congress and changed the agendas of Sunday’s presidential competition finalists, left-wing Andrés Arauz and conservative Guillermo Lasso.

“Ecuadorian politics will never be the same,” said Farith Simon, an Ecuadorian law professor and columnist. “There is still racism, but there is also an affirmation of the value of indigenous culture, of pride in its national role.”

Early on Sunday evening, the country’s electoral council had not yet announced a winner in the race.

In an effort to bring indigenous voters to justice and to be aware of the need to work with the new powerful indigenous bloc in Congress, Mr Arauz and Mr Lasso had revised their messages and postponed competition from the polarizing socialist-conservative soil that politics has been nationally defined for years. Instead, debates arise about the deep-seated inequality of Ecuador and an economic model based on the export of oil and metals extracted from indigenous countries.

Both candidates had promised to take greater environmental protection measures and give indigenous communities a greater say in the extraction of resources. The 66-year-old banker Lasso pledged to improve economic opportunities for indigenous peoples who, despite decades of advances in access to education, health care and jobs, are well below national averages.

The 36-year-old economist Arauz, who was in the lead in the first round of voting, promised to lead Ecuador as a true “plurinational” country in recognition of its 15 indigenous nations. Though largely symbolic, the designation has been sought for decades by the country’s indigenous party, Pachakutik, as a strong recognition of their people’s central place in Ecuador.

Pachakutik’s rise on the national stage has not only drawn the attention of the country’s indigenous minority, but has also raised deeper identity issues for the entire electorate. Although only 8 percent of Ecuadorians identified themselves as indigenous people in the last census, a large proportion of the population is ethnically mixed.

“This is a difficult conversation for us as a nation, but there is no going back,” said Mr Simon.

The man most responsible for political change was environmental activist Yaku Pérez, the Pachakutik presidential candidate in the first round of elections in February.

Pérez, 52, narrowly missed the runoff election, but significantly expanded Pachakutik’s historic single-digit appeal by advocating for women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and efforts to combat climate change. Mr Pérez also supported abortion rights and same-sex marriages, which created tension in his socially conservative indigenous constituency.

“Pérez had a tremendous ability to open up his horizons and discourse to include topics that didn’t exist,” said Alberto Acosta, a former Pachakutik presidential candidate.

The rise of Mr. Pérez is part of a larger generation change in the left movements in Latin America. Driven in part by social media and political protests in the United States, where most Latin American nations have large diasporas, younger left-wing politicians are prioritizing environmental, gender, and minority issues over their mentors’ Marxist doctrine.

In neighboring Peru, 40-year-old Verónika Mendoza was one of the top candidates in Sunday’s presidential election, promising to grant land titles to indigenous communities and to protect the environment. In Bolivia, 34-year-old indigenous leader Eva Copa recently won a mayor’s race in El Alto, a melting pot town known as a bell tower.

This new generation of leaders is moving beyond the traditional left and right gap and questioning their country’s historic reliance on large mining, oil and agribusiness projects for economic growth, said Carwil Bjork-James, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee .

“These are big continental questions that the indigenous movements have been asking for a long time,” said Bjork-James. “To see how these questions are asked politically is a new level.”

Such a framework is short-sighted, say their rivals. South American nations have no choice but to rely on raw material revenues to recover from the pandemic. And only through economic development, it is said, can inequalities be fully addressed.

In Ecuador, Mr Pérez managed to win nearly 20 percent of the vote in February, but his party and its allies rose from nine to 43 congressional seats in the elections and became kingmakers in the country’s broken 137-seat legislature.

The campaign initially focused on the legacy of Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s longest-serving democratic president. He had lifted millions out of poverty during a raw materials boom in the 2000s, but his authoritarian style and the corruption allegations that haunted him had bitterly divided the nation.

Mr Correa, who stepped down in 2017, selected Mr Arauz to represent his leftist movement this year and catapulted the 36-year-old to the top of the polls despite his limited experience and national recognition. Mr Lasso focused his early campaign message on fears that Mr Correa would continue to exert influence.

However, the results of the first round showed that “a large part of the population does not want to be drawn into this conflict between the supporters and opponents of Correa, which reduces the problems of Ecuadorians to a binary vision,” said former candidate Acosta.

Pachakutik’s electoral success this year stems from a wave of national protests in October 2019 when the indigenous movement marched into the capital, Quito, to demand the lifting of a deeply unpopular cut in gasoline subsidies. The protests turned violent, killing at least eight people, but the government withdrew the subsidy cut after 12 days of unrest.

“We have shown the country that the indigenous peoples are looking for a transformation of this dominant system that only serves the wealthiest,” said Diocelinda Iza, a leader of the Kichwa Nation in central Cotopaxi Province.

The life of Mr Pérez, the presidential candidate, embodies the difficulties of the indigenous movement. He was born in a high Andean valley in southern Ecuador to a family of impoverished farmers. His father was Kichwa, his mother Kañari.

His parents worked on the estate of a local landowner with no payment for living on his property, a rural establishment that has changed little since the colonial days.

Since childhood, Mr Pérez said he remembered the seemingly endless work in the fields, the hunger pangs and the humiliation he felt at school when his mother came to parents’ meetings in traditional skirts.

“I was very ashamed to be local, to come from the field, to be a farmer, to have a father together,” said Pérez in an interview in March. In order to be successful in school, he said: “In the end I made myself white, colonized myself and rejected our identity.”

Mr. Pérez studied at a local university, practiced law and got involved in politics through local associations that defended municipal water rights. He rose to become governor of the Ecuadorian region of Azuay, the fifth most populous in the country, before quitting running for president.

Its story has resonated with other indigenous peoples, many of whom see today’s political endeavors in the context of the five centuries since the colonial conquest of Ecuador.

“We are not campaigning for a person,” said an indigenous leader, Luz Namicela Contento, “but for a political project.”

Jose María León Cabrera reported from Tarqui, Ecuador, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Moscow. Mitra Taj contributed to coverage from Lima, Peru.

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World News

Mom of Killed Indigenous Man Advised to ‘Get It Collectively’ by Canadian Police

Mother of Killed Indigenous Man Told to ‘Get It Together’ by Canadian Police

OTTAWA – When seven police officers arrived at Debbie Baptiste’s house in August 2016, circling the house and carrying rifles, they informed her that her son was dead. Instead of comforting the grieving mother, they asked if she had been drinking and told her to “put it all together.”

The persistent treatment of Ms. Baptiste, a Cree woman, as well as other incidents of racial discrimination by police against her family were described in an independent review, which was released to the public on Monday, that examined the police’s conduct and investigation into the death of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man in Saskatchewan.

The damning report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission found that officers treated Ms. Baptiste “with such insensitivity that her treatment amounted to a pretense of discrimination.” The surveillance group, which has no power to punish, also found that the police could not protect the evidence at the scene where Mr. Boushie was killed and destroyed records of the handling of the case.

“It felt like I was forever fighting a battle that could never be won,” Ms. Baptiste said at a press conference Monday. “The injustices of racism in the courtroom, the discrimination must stop. Things have to change. We need a change for the future generation. “

Mr Boushie was shot dead after he and four other Indians drove into Gerald Stanley’s property in August 2016. Mr Stanley testified in court that he believed their goal was theft, which he and his son were trying to prevent.

Mr Stanley was acquitted in 2018 after testifying that he accidentally shot Mr Boushie in the back of the head when his semi-automatic pistol exhibited a rare mechanical malfunction. The verdict shocked many Indigenous Canadians.

In a country where politicians typically shy away from court rulings, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has made healing Canada’s relations with its indigenous peoples a priority, released a message of support and met with Mr Boushie’s family after the 2018 trial.

On Monday, Mr Trudeau told reporters that the treatment of Mr Boushie’s family and friends was “unacceptable”, adding, “Unfortunately, we have seen examples of systemic racism within the RCMP in many of our institutions and we need to do so.” better.”

The National Police Federation, a union that represents the mounted police force, disagreed with the report’s findings, saying it “promotes a perspective that disregards our members and challenges their impartiality, commitment and professionalism.” In a separate response to the report, the union rejected the commission’s report on what happened at Ms. Baptiste, claiming that it “only reflected the Boushie family’s interpretation of the interaction” and not the reports of the officials present.

“The RCMP union is still asking the people of this country not to believe this woman,” Chris Murphy, lawyer for the Boushie family, told reporters. “Shame on you.”

The killing and acquittal remain a source of anger for many Indigenous Canadians who have argued the case, which has exposed significant flaws in the Canadian legal system. Mr Boushie’s family and others said the police were racially discriminatory towards them while being respectful of a farmer who was ultimately charged with murder.

Mr. Boushie was out swimming with friends when a tire fell on her Ford Escape near Mr. Stanley’s farm in central Saskatchewan. Mr Stanley testified that he and his son believed the group, many of whom were drunk, were trying to steal vehicles. The two men came out with guns and attacked the escape with a hammer. After Mr. Boushie was killed, the others fled.

As a result, the commission said, police descended on Ms. Baptiste’s home in Red Pheasant Cree Nation, her indigenous community, with two goals: to inform them of Mr. Boushie’s death and to look for a member of Mr. Boushie’s group Friends on a related investigation into theft and attempted theft. No one in the group was ultimately charged with theft.

Officers armed with rifles circled Ms. Baptiste’s house and told her about her son’s death when she came to the porch. After hearing the news, Ms. Baptiste collapsed and was taken to the house by police.

“MS. Baptiste was concerned about the news they had just given her. A member told her to bring it together,” the report said. “One or more RCMP members smelled their breath,” apparently because of it Signs of alcohol.

Although they lacked a required search warrant, police officers ransacked Ms. Baptiste’s home.

Back at the scene, the report found lax investigative practices. Immediately thereafter, little effort was made to gather forensic evidence and little was done to protect evidence on-site. Despite bad weather predictions, the Ford Escape that killed Mr Boushie was not covered, allowing rain to wash away blood spatter evidence before forensic scientists arrived about three days later, the commission said.

The commission said it also had “serious concerns” about the failure of the Serious Crimes Division to visit the scene when it took over the case. She also criticized the police for failing to tell Mr. Stanley, his wife, and son not to discuss the case together before making statements and that they were together in a family car that was part of the crime scene assembled police station were allowed to drive.

The report also found that the police were destroying records and transcripts of their communications from the time of the murder, which were in accordance with standard on-file records, but knowing that Mr Boushie’s family and the commission had filed complaints for which they were Files would have been relevant.

“We have recognized that there is systemic racism in the RCMP,” the Mounted Police Department in Saskatchewan said in a statement, adding that it plans to implement the recommendations in the commission’s report.

In addition to making recommendations that include reviewing the procedures with the officers involved in the case as well as reviewing general Mounties practices in this part of Saskatchewan, the commission said that cultural awareness training should be offered to all police officers. “Taking into account the factors identified in the latest research. “

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Brenda Lucki, who had the opportunity to comment on the Commission’s findings prior to their publication, said she accepted the main findings, despite rejecting a few small points in the report

“This entire judicial system from top to bottom must be restored,” said chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents the First Nations in Saskatchewan, at a press conference. “Brenda Lucki, what are you going to do instead of just saying that we agree with what has been found? Big thing. Brenda Lucki, do something. ”