Canada’s Indigenous chiefs on Thursday elected a new national leader — Cindy Woodhouse, who recently negotiated a historic deal for families who suffered discrimination under the country’s child welfare system.
Woodhouse said she was taking the helm of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), a group representing hundreds of communities across the country, at what she said was a challenging time for Indigenous peoples.
“I say to Canada and Canadians, ‘We need your support,'” Woodhouse, who is originally from the central province of Manitoba, said in her victory speech to delegates from more than 600 communities.
“I know that we have a lot of work to do,” she added.
Indigenous people, who represent five percent of Canada’s population, live in communities often marked by poverty, high unemployment, poor housing and discrimination.
“We need a leader that will bring us together, that will work with us, that will hear us and the issues that we face,” Karen Bird, leader of a Cree community in Saskatchewan province, told AFP.
“The next national chief has a lot of work in front of them,” commented Sioux chief Tony Alexis of Alberta.
Woodhouse takes over from RoseAnne Archibald, who was ousted last year over accusations of harassment in a scandal that weakened the AFN.
Last April, she led a battle for federal compensation for children and their families who suffered under the country’s discriminatory child welfare system.
The settlement reached in October saw Can$23 billion (US$17 billion) awarded to more than 300,000 children and their families.
It came on the heels of discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at former Indigenous residential schools set up by the government to effectively strip students of their culture and language.
The grisly discoveries have sent shockwaves through Canada and raised national awareness of the dark past of how Indigenous people were treated.
From the late 19th century to the 1990s, some 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed into one of 139 residential schools.
Thousands died, mostly from malnutrition, disease or neglect, in what a truth and reconciliation committee concluded in a 2015 report was “cultural genocide.” Many others were physically or sexually abused.
The AFN said recently it was working to secure funding from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government — which has made reconciliation a priority — and resources for the recovery of their remains.
