The assembly of First Nations had a new leader on this date in 2014 after Saskatchewan’s Perry Bellegarde won an impressive first-ballot victory at the group’s leadership convention. “To the people across the great land, I say to you, that the values of fairness and tolerance which Canada exports to the world, is a lie when it comes to our people," he said in his victory address. “To Canada, we say, for far too long we have been dispossessed of our homelands and the wealth of our rightful inheritance."
Bellegarde would serve as the AFN’s National Chief until 2021.
You can read the CBC’s on-line coverage of the former National Chief’s victory tr this link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/perry-bellegarde-named-new-afn-national-chief-1.2866977
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.