Harold Cardinal

Harold Cardinal (January 27, 1945 – June 3, 2005) was a Cree writer, political leader, teacher, negotiator and lawyer.

From the start Cardinal steadfastly demanded, on behalf of all First Nation peoples, the right to be "the red tile in the Canadian mosaic."

Cardinal was a lifelong student of First Nations law as practiced by Cree and other Aboriginal Elders, and this study has been complemented, but in no way supplanted, by extensive study of law in mainstream educational institutions. He was also a generous mentor and inspiration to a great many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students, professionals and political leaders.

He died of lung cancer in 2005 at the age of 60.

Cardinal's activism began early, as he was elected president of the Canadian Indian Youth Council in 1966. His leadership qualities began to surface in 1968 when, at age 23, he was elected leader of the Indian Association of Alberta for an unprecedented nine terms, during which he was instrumental in the formation of the National Indian Brotherhood (the forerunner of the Assembly of First Nations).

Cardinal then served the people of his home community, the Sucker Creek Indian Band, as their Chief.

Cardinal served as the Vice Chief of the Assembly of First Nations during the period of the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in the early 1980s.

Cardinal was instrumental in the creation, in 1984, of the Prairie Treaty Nations Alliance, representing all First Nations of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, to advance issues of concern to those First Nations with particular emphasis on their treaties with the Crown.

Cardinal also participated in Canadian federal politics, in 2000 running unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Liberal Party in the riding of Athabasca. He ran against David Chatters, who had been accused of being anti-Native, in explicit opposition to the apparent revival of popular and political support for policies of Aboriginal assimilation.

Cardinal rose to national prominence in the late 1960s. In 1968, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau proclaimed Canada to be a "just society." However, after a promising round of consultations between the government of Canada and aboriginal leaders in which issues of Aboriginal and Treaty rights and the right of self-government were prominently discussed, Aboriginal people were outraged when Trudeau’s Minister of Indian Affairs, the Hon. (later Prime Minister of Canada) introduced a "White Paper" which advocated the elimination of separate legal status for native people in Canada. The white paper amounted to an assimilation program which, if implemented, would have repealed the Indian Act, transferred responsibility for Indian Affairs to the provinces and terminated the rights of Indians under the various treaties they had made with the Crown.

...
Wikipedia