One of his generation’s most significant Indigenous leaders celebrates his birthday today. Ovide Mercredi, who led the Assembly of First Nations as National Chief from 1991 to 1997. A lawyer and distinguished constitutional scholar, he played a crucial role on the national stage during the Charlottetown Accord negotiations in the early 1990s.
A proud member of Manitoba’s Misipawistik Cree Nation, Mercredi graduated with a degree in law from the University of Manitoba in the late 1970s. In 1989 he became Regional Chief of the Assembly of First Nations for Manitoba, and in that role, played crucial roles in the debates surrounding the Meech Lake constitutional accord signed by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Canada’s Premiers in 1987.
Chief Mercredi turns 79 today and I know that all readers of Art’s History will join with me in extending best wishes to this tireless advocate for Indigenous Canada on his special day.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.