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QUIZ No. 3
Subject: Aboriginal Women
15 questions to test your knowledge
Editor's note: March 7th begins International Women's Week
and a celebration of the contributions that women have made around
the world. Windspeaker uses the Canadian Classroom page this
month for a quiz that will remind readers of the remarkable Aboriginal
women who have shaped our societies with their achievements over
the years. Their stories provide encouragement to all-men and
women, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.
1. Who was the first Aboriginal woman elected to the House
of Commons in Canada?
2. Who was the first Aboriginal woman elected as a government
leader?
3. She was the first Aboriginal woman, and first Métis
person, to hold a seat in Canada's Senate.
4. She was Canada's first ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs.
5. Thanks to her successful appeal to the Human Rights Commission
of the United Nations, Native women in Canada would no longer
lose their status under the Indian Act through marriage to non-Native
men.
6. This woman was the first Aboriginal person-man or woman-to
be appointed by the federal government to a superior court of
law.
7. She was the first First Nations woman in Canada to obtain
a law degree.
8. Who initiated the first Indian controlled education institute
in North America?
9. On the 100th anniversary of her birth, a commemorative
stamp was released to honor this well-known Aboriginal poet.
10. She won a bronze medal in the 3,000-metre race at the
Barcelona Olympic Summer Games in 1992.
11. This co-captain of the 2000 Canadian Olympic water polo
team was the first woman named as Carlton University's athlete
of the year three consecutive times.
12. She received a Gemini award for best actress in 1997.
13. This singer/songwriter won an Academy Award in 1982.
14. She is chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the
Inuit organization that represents the interests of the Inuit
peoples of northern Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia.
15. This member of Gordon First Nation (Saskatchewan) is
one of the few women in Canada and all of the Aboriginal world
to become a neuro-psychiatrist.
ANSWERS:
1. Ethel Blondin Andrew-Liberal, Yukon, elected in 1988. In
1993 she was also the first to be appointed to the federal cabinet
when she became Minister of State for Youth and Training.
2. Nellie Cournoyea, elected in 1991 as government leader
of the Northwest Territories. She was also the first Aboriginal
woman elected to the N.W.T. legislature (1979).
3. Thelma Chalifoux, who just retired in February after reaching
the mandatory retirement age of 75. She was called to the Senate
in 1997 by former prime minister Jean Chrétien.
4. Mary May Simon was appointed Ambassador of Circumpolar
Affairs on Oct. 31, 1994, becoming the first Inuk to hold an
ambassadorial position. Simon was born in Kangirsualujuak (George
River), Nunavik.
5. Sandra Lovelace, Tobique First Nation, N.B. After the dissolution
of her marriage to a non-Native American airman, Sandra Lovelace
and her children returned to her home community only to be denied
the housing, education and health care that would be afforded
those with status under the Indian Act. After a 10-year battle
that took her to an international forum for justice, Lovelace's
status was restored under Bill C-31. She was not the first woman
to be re-enfranchised, however. That honor went to Mary Two-Axe
Early in 1984, a Mohawk from Kahnawake (Quebec).
6. Rose Boyko was appointed to the Ontario Superior Court in
1994. She was awarded a National Aboriginal Achievement Award
in 1999. Her biography can be found online at www.amma.com.
7. Roberta Jamieson is not only the first First Nations woman
in Canada to obtain a law degree, she is also the first Aboriginal
woman to hold the post of Ontario Ombudsman and the first woman
to be elected chief of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory
in Ontario.
8. Ida Wasacase was born on the Ochapowace First Nation (Saskatchewan).
In the mid-70s, she initiated the establishment of the Saskatchewan
Indian Federated College, now known as the First Nations University
of Canada. When the college first opened it had an enrolment
of just nine students. Today the average enrolment is 1,300 students.
9. In 1961, Emily Pauline Johnson was commemorated for her
contribution to Canadian literature. Her name and likeness adorned
a five-cent postage stamp issued March 10 of that year. The Mohawk
woman is remembered particularly for her poem The Song My Paddle
Sings.
10. Track and Field star Angela Chalmers. Her first major national
competition was in 1981 at the Canada Summer Games in Thunder
Bay where she won two silver medals in the 800- and 1,500-metre
events. That led to a spot on the 1988 Canadian Olympic team.
At the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, she became the first
woman in the history to win both the 1,500- and 3,000-metre races.
Four years later, the 30-year-old Chalmers successfully defended
her 3,000-metre crown in dramatic fashion at the Victoria Commonwealth
Games breaking both the Canadian and Commonwealth records.
11. Waneek Horn-Miller won 20 gold medals at the Indigenous games
between 1990 and 1997, and was an integral part of the senior
Canadian women's water polo team that won the gold medal at the
1999 Pan-American games in Winnipeg. Horn-Miller first made headlines
not for her sporting achievements, however, but for something
that happened at Oka during the crisis of 1990, when at the age
of 14 she was stabbed in the chest by a soldier's bayonet. The
bayonet blade was deflected off her sternum, mitigating the injury.
12. Tina Keeper was nominated for a Gemini in the Best Performance
by an Actress in a Continuous Leading Dramatic Role each year
from 1994 to 1998 for her portrayal of RCMP Constable Michelle
Kenidi on the CBC television show North of 60, but a win in that
category didn't come until 1997.
13. Buffy Sainte-Marie was born on the Piapot First Nation
in Saskatchewan. She received the Academy Award in 1982 for her
song, "Up Where We Belong" from the movie An Officer
And A Gentleman. Her music first won international acclaim in
the 1960s when her song "Universal Soldier" became
an anthem of the peace movement. Her song "Until It's Time
for You to Go" has been recorded by more than 200 artists
in 16 languages. Sainte-Marie helped develop the Juno Awards
category-The Best Music of Aboriginal Canada. The Juno Awards
will be held in Edmonton on April 4. Among the nominees for this
year's Aboriginal Recording of the Year are Susan Aglukark for
Big Feeling and Sandy Scofield for Ketwam.
14. Sheila Watt Cloutier was born in the tiny community of
Kuujjuaq in Northern Quebec and is an advocate for the people
and environment of the circumpolar region. She was successful
in persuading states to sign a global agreement to ban the generation
and use of persistent organic pollutants, such as DDT and PCBs,
that contaminate the Arctic food chain. For this work she received
the inaugural global environmental award from the World Association
of Non-Governmental Organizations.
15. Dr. Lillian Eva Dyck was put in the "slow room"
when she attended grade school in Swift Current, Sask., and may
have languished there, but for the special interest one perceptive
teacher took in her. Dyck went on to earn a PhD and become a
full professor in the University of Saskatchewan's Department
of Psychiatry were she studies Alzheimer Disease and other diseases
of the brain. FYI: March 10 to 16 is Brain Awareness Week.
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