Loretta Woodhouse, mother of Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse, places her daughter's headdress on her head as Cindy's father, Garnet, looks on, in Montreal on July 8.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
National Chief Cindy Woodhouse was just four years old when she attended her first Assembly of First Nations meeting.
The gathering was focused on education. Her father, who was a band councillor at the time and the chief of her First Nation in central Manitoba, took her along to the meeting in British Columbia. It was the first of many she attended while growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.
“I remember listening to them and the passion that they had for our rights and for making a better life for our people,” Ms. Woodhouse said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
This week, she is attending her first annual general assembly as the head of the national organization that advocates for more than 600 First Nations across the country.
Ms. Woodhouse was elected the AFN’s national chief – she’s the second woman to hold the position – late last year on a campaign that prioritized policing and strengthening federal and provincial relationships. In the past six months, she’s focused on negotiations related to child welfare reform and has already faced dissent from chiefs over inherent treaty issues and a dispute with her predecessor, who is suing the AFN over her own removal.
This summer’s annual general assembly agenda includes long-term reform and compensation of First Nations child and family services, First Nations policing and justice, and the First Nations Clean Water Act. She said she wants to tackle hot topics like these and others including language with a united front, though she added that she doesn’t plan to let the federal government “off the hook.”
“I know that there’s many groups across this country that are in negotiations on different things right now, whether that’s claims or negotiating housing agreements or new fiscal agreements. There’s time to fight, then there’s time to try and get some work done.”
Ms. Woodhouse grew up on the Pinaymootang reserve in Treaty 2, about a three-hour drive north of Winnipeg. She was raised by a politically minded father, Garnet Woodhouse, a long-serving band councillor and chief for Pinaymootang, and her educator mother Loretta Woodhouse. The younger Ms. Woodhouse said her parents carved a path for their only daughter (she has four brothers) that valued community, politics, education and opportunity. She now has three children of her own.
Her family’s legacy goes back generations to her great-great-grandfather Richard Woodhouse, a chief and signatory to Treaty 2 in 1871. The original medal used in the signing of the treaty with the Crown remains in her family, and was passed down from her father to her oldest son.
“I’ve seen what our people went through, or the discrimination we face in the health field that [my father] would have to listen to all the time because people would be complaining about not getting access to doctors or just basic things, access to basic necessities of life,” she said.
Today, she connects those disparities with what she described as failed treaty relationships.
The government “made the Indian Act in Parliament after the making of treaties. That’s not the relationship that our ancestors, even their ancestors, envisioned that I think that we need to get to a different relationship,” Ms. Woodhouse said.
She said there was a time she watched her predecessors and other First Nations leadership “go at the government together, united ... and I think that that was necessary,” recalling how she watched the big protests against the First Nations Governance Act in 2002, which never passed.
Ms. Woodhouse said she is now trying a different approach by ensuring she and the AFN have a seat at the table with both the federal and provincial governments. She plans to meet with all the premiers soon.
She said that new approach is working. For example, Ms. Woodhouse pointed to the recent commitment from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to apologize for discriminating against First Nations children in care. Last year Federal Court approved an agreement under which Ottawa will compensate more than 300,000 First Nations children and their families over chronic underfunding of on-reserve child welfare services. Ms. Woodhouse led the negotiations for the AFN as the regional chief for Manitoba.
Her predecessor, RoseAnne Archibald, recently sued the AFN for $5-million in damages for defamation of character, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence. Ms. Archibald was ousted by the chiefs at last summer’s annual assembly after an internal report alleged workplace harassment.
Critics of the AFN, including other First Nations leaders, have faulted the AFN’s role as a national advocacy group and, in particular, what they say is a cozy relationship with the federal government.
Some of those tensions were on display this week. On the first day of the assembly Tuesday, chiefs from Alberta called on the AFN to withdraw a resolution that they say tramples on their treaty rights. They scolded Ms. Woodhouse and her executive regional chiefs for not respecting them as their nations’ rights holders.
Russell Diabo, a Kahnawake policy analyst who lost his bid for the national chief position in 2018, said Ms. Woodhouse’s immediate challenge will be keeping the AFN together because of the diverse views of chiefs from different regions, and it’s not just Alberta.
Mr. Diabo said the task of appeasing the range of views from more than 600 chiefs is compounded by a relationship with the federal government that favours co-operative national chiefs.
Mr. Diabo said the biggest challenge for Ms. Woodhouse and the AFN will be the next federal election, expected next year.
“If there’s a change in government, then as we know, the priorities will shift including spending priorities, and the relationship between AFN and the federal government will change,” he said.
Ms. Woodhouse said she’s met with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife, Anaida, and is working on building a relationship with Mr. Poilievre that differs from the one with former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, which she called hurtful.
She said she still needs to get clearance and direction from the chiefs on what a new fiscal relationship would look like with Mr. Poilievre, who is scheduled to speak at the assembly this week, in the event that he wins next year’s federal election.
“I think that it’s important that all political parties tune into First Nations,” Ms. Woodhouse said. “They can’t ignore us any more, the way they did for a hundred and something years. We’re here, we’re loud, we’re united and we’re progressive.”