OTTAWA: Canada named Mary Simon on Tuesday as its first indigenous governor general — Queen Elizabeth II’s official representative in the Commonwealth country — as the nation faces a reckoning with its colonial history.

“Today, after 154 years, our country takes a historic step,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference. “I cannot think of a better person to meet the moment.” Simon, a former journalist and advocate of indigenous rights, has previously served as president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organisation.

She was also president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents Inuit in all Arctic countries.

And she has been credited with helping negotiate a 1975 landmark deal between Cree and Inuit and Quebec’s provincial government, described as Canada’s first modern treaty with First Nations.

Her appointment as viceregal representative, responsible for giving royal assent or making acts passed by parliament law as well as heading Canada’s military, comes at a difficult period in the country’s relations with First Nations. The discovery of more than 1,000 unmarked pupils’ graves at former indigenous residential schools has convulsed Canada, provoking anger and grief in indigenous communities.

Until the 1990s, some 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis youngsters were forcibly enrolled in 139 residential schools run by the Catholic church on behalf of the government. More than 4,000 students died of disease and neglect. Others have recounted physical and sexual abuses by headmasters and teachers who stripped them of their culture and language.

In a suspected backlash, more than a dozen churches across the country have been burned in recent weeks and statues of Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Vitoria, who reigned over Canada when the first residential schools were opened, were torn down by protestors.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2021