Ousted AFN chief RoseAnne Archibald obstructed reconciliation
National Post, 29 June 2023
Her contributions were mostly negative
The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) was dismissed on Wednesday as 71 per cent of the chiefs — 163 of 231 — voted to remove her. The saga of her painful leadership has been damaging for the AFN as an umbrella advocacy organization for Canada’s First Nations. Her dismissal offers the prospect of authentic Indigenous reconciliation to advance, in particular with Catholics.
To be sure, RoseAnne Archibald’s ouster was not on policy matters. Almost as soon as she was elected chief in July 2021, there were reports that she was an office bully as the AFN regional chief for Ontario.
Eventually, she was suspended in June 2022 after internal reports faulted Archibald for bullying and harassment of staff. She was reinstated in July 2022 when the AFN chiefs voted against her suspension. More internal investigations followed and led to further reports this spring, finding further fault. The chiefs then voted to dismiss her this week.
“Many women are watching,” Archibald said ahead of the vote, who has consistently maintained that a corrupt, old-boys network has been out to get her, the first female national chief.
“What’s happening to me would never happen to a male chief. It would never happen to any of my predecessors,” she said, maintaining that she was only guilty of “minor breaches” of human resources policy.
On the alleged abuse of her staff, I don’t have any particular insight, even as the chiefs were emphatically convinced. But Archibald’s tenure coincided with a very delicate time regarding reconciliation related to residential schools, and her contributions were mostly negative. Her dismissal is therefore positive on that front.
Archibald came to office after the potential unmarked graves in Kamloops made international headlines and sparked a national crisis, with flags being lowered to half-mast for months at Canadian embassies around the world, statues of Sir John A. Macdonald being removed, and the House of Commons unanimously declaring that Canada is guilty of genocide.
In that context, the Catholic dimension of the residential schools settlement came under renewed examination. By the autumn of 2021, Canadian Indigenous leaders were invited to have several days of meetings with Pope Francis in Rome, to prepare for a papal visit the following year. The meeting, due to pandemic travel restrictions, was postponed to March 2022.
Archibald refused to go. She demanded that the pope come to meet her, treating the Holy Father as she apparently treated her staff. No one thought that Archibald personally had much to contribute to the process, but if the national chief refuses even to attend a meeting, it does make reconciliation rather more difficult. And to be clear, Archibald and other Indigenous leaders were extended an invitation that no one else has received from the Vatican in recent memory — several hours with the pope over the course of several days. Some heads of government get twenty minutes.
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