Premiere in North America: First Indigenous Peoples in the Supreme Court of Canada

Premiere in North America
Indigenous people for the first time in the Supreme Court of Canada

08/20/2022, 12:48 am

Canada has been working on how to deal with the indigenous population for years. Now a milestone has been reached: for the first time ever, a member of the “First Nation” has been appointed to the Supreme Court.

Canada has appointed a female representative to the Supreme Court for the first time. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Michelle O’Boneswin brings “invaluable knowledge and input” to the country’s Supreme Court. His nomination was the result of an “open, fair selection process”. It is seeking for the first time in the country the redress of the abuse of indigenous people. This has not happened in the neighboring country of America so far.

O’Bonswyn, an Abenaki from Odunk, Quebec, has been a member of the Ontario Supreme Court since 2017 and specializes in health and human rights issues. She will take up her new position at the end of this month.

As a member of the First Nations (“First Nations”), she felt it needed “people committed to giving a strong voice to those who cannot speak for themselves,” an application provided by the government. The judge said in has been published.

Pope apologizes to indigenous people

In recent years, Canada has tried to come to terms with a dark chapter in its past: between the late 19th century and the 1990s, the government sent some 150,000 Indigenous children to boarding schools, most of them in the Catholic Church. were run by. They were cut off from their family, their language and their culture. Many of them were physically and sexually abused.

Officially, more than 4,000 children died as a result of malnutrition, disease, and neglect, and it is estimated that as many as 6,000 children may have died. A National Commission of Inquiry called it “cultural genocide”. Last year, the discovery of 1,300 anonymous graves caused a wave of shock.

Murray Sinclair, former chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said “it is high time that the Court reserved a seat for an Indigenous judge” who “has direct knowledge of the impact of colonialism on Indigenous communities”. The fate of indigenous children in boarding schools. Pope Francis visited Canada a few weeks ago and asked the country’s natives to apologize for their suffering.