This biography, written by Johanna Strong, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.
Born: 1966 or 1967, Canada
Died: NA
Country most active: Canada
Also known as: NA
RoseAnne Archibald was the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, which represents 634 First Nations with 900,000 members. She was elected on 8 July 2021, served until June 2023 and is the first woman to hold the position.
RoseAnne is part of the Taykwa Tagamou Nation and was the first member of her community to complete a Master’s degree. She owned a consulting business which specialised in negotiations for Indigenous leaders and organisers before going into politics. She is also an artist, whose work includes political art, landscape and portrait photography, and music.
In 1990, at the age of 23, she was elected Chief of the Taykwa Tagamou Nation, becoming the youngest chief and the first woman in the role. She was awarded a Canada 125 medal in 1992 (the 125th anniversary of Canadian confederation in 1867) in recognition of the contribution her leadership made to Canada. She made history again when she became the youngest and the first female Deputy Grand Chief for the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation. In 2018, she became the first woman elected as Ontario Regional Chief.
Upon entering her role as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, she declared that her focus would be responding to settler Canadian colonialism and addressing the historical genocide of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island. She also acknowledged that she was making history by being a woman, but that she is more concerned with creating a healing path for Indigenous communities and providing opportunities from which they were historically barred.
Recommended Reading
Charnel Anderson, ““Invest in healing”: Chief RoseAnne Archibald on what the next government must do,” 16 September 2021. https://www.tvo.org/article/invest-in-healing-chief-roseanne-archibald-on-what-the-next-government-must-do
Stephen Sackur, interview with RoseAnne Archibald, 4 August 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1nbk.