The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Canada’s largest and most influential indigenous advocacy group, elected its very first female national chief, RoseAnne Archibald, on July 8, 2021.
Another first occurred on June 28, 2023 with Archibald’s removal as national chief of this 41-year-old organization.
That was when the chiefs-in-assembly, for a second time, addressed Archibald’s fate based on complaints of workplace harassment and a breach of both its whistle-blower policies and code of conduct and ethics, charges supported by the powerful 10-member group of AFN regional chiefs.
Understanding why this happened requires consideration. Archibald won the July 2021 national chief election on a platform that included a pledge to clean up the organization.
Her dismissal also seems rooted in rumours of workplace disarray that surfaced towards the end of 2021, eventually leading to bullying allegations against Archibald from four of her staff members.
A fifth complaint by the AFN’s former CEO followed sometime later.
In a statement issued June 16, 2022, the AFN confirmed it received the complaints the month before against Archibald and determined the findings supported further inquiry by an independent external investigator.
In her defence statement released the same day, Archibald claimed she welcomed the investigation but called for a forensic audit and independent inquiry into the last eight years of AFN operations.
The 10-member AFN executive committee, together with its board of directors, nevertheless voted to temporarily suspend her the very next day, pending the outcome of the external study.
But Archibald quickly was reinstated on July 5, 2022 at an AFN General Assembly when the Indian Chiefs-in-Assembly representing the 634 registered Indian Bands, the organization’s grassroots ruling body, roundly rejected a resolution calling for her suspension with only 44 voting in support, 252 voting against and 26 abstentions.
Archibald was less successful the second time around. The June 28 non-confidence motion secured 71%, or 163 of the 231 votes cast, calling for her dismissal following a supposed damning report by the external investigator that has never been released to band chiefs.
This partly accounts for why Archibald’s many supporters were outraged that she was dismissed in haste by only 26% of the 634 eligible associations voters.
According to the CBC, Archibald’s battle with the entrenched AFN, mainly male elites, began even before she assumed office.
In December 2020, Archibald backed a resolution calling for an investigation into gender-based discrimination at the AFN; it escalated in February 2021 when the Chiefs of Ontario umbrella group she headed passed a resolution calling for an independent financial review at the AFN.
Her term as national chief has been marked by repeated calls to investigate AFN financial and other corruption including incompetent administration, worker apathy and poor job performance, inflated salaries, wasteful spending, political patronage, exorbitant payout demands, unaccountability and a lack of transparency, untendered contracts, and related issues.
Even Indigenous Services Canada secretly intensified its monitoring of cash flow at the AFN shortly after Archibald was elected national chief, unclassified internal memos have shown.
But even before that, departmental officials had “long raised concerns” about the AFN re-allocating programme money to make up for deficits in operational funding, which the department’s deals with the AFN wouldn’t allow — and which the AFN denies has ever happened — according to a memo dated Nov. 5, 2020.
But this is not the end of the story because, if nothing else, Archibald is a tenacious political warrior. In 1990, aged 23, she was the first woman and youngest chief ever elected by her band in. She was the first woman and youngest Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief in 1991, and the first woman and youngest Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Council in 1994. And she became the first woman elected as Ontario Regional Chief in 2018.
In the fractious world of indigenous politics, Archibald has proven to be a survivor. So, it should come as no surprise that since her ouster, she has launched a frantic campaign to regain AFN leadership.
In a short video on July 3, Archibald appealed to her supporters to contact their respective chiefs and councils to demand her reinstatement as national chief and to advocate for a forensic audit of AFN finances under her predecessors, something she had called for on several previous occasions.
Her latest charge in a second video is the need for an independent investigation into potential government interference in AFN affairs, an organization federal officials have always claimed is independent of any government interference.
“The AFN has become a tool for the government,” Archibald said during a Facebook Live video on the evening of July 6.
She alluded to interference in the video, including allegations that there were connections between assembly staff, chiefs, former national chiefs and the federal Liberal government.
One of the 10 regional chiefs, a fierce enemy of Archibald, who make up the AFN regional chief executive became the interim leader of the national lobby group on July 9 as per the June 28 resolution.
The AFN began its 44th Annual General Assembly in Halifax on Tuesday, July 11, and it’s an open question whether it will focus exclusively on its agenda or if the group’s chaotic leadership dispute will dominate a gathering of hundreds of chiefs and other leaders.
Archibald vowed in a statement issued late Monday night to attend Day 1 of the meeting online, and potentially still travel to Halifax later this week. According to the CBC, she said the election of New Brunswick Regional Chief Joanna Bernard as interim national chief on July 10 was “marred by conflict of interest and a laterally violent coup against me as the first duly elected female National Chief.”
Archibald urged sympathetic chiefs to head for Halifax and reverse the decision while calling for a probe into government meddling in assembly affairs.
Joe Alphonse, chief of the Tl’etinqox-t’in Government and chair of the Tŝilhqot’in National Government, seconded the June 28 resolution in support of Archibald. He said he was disgusted by the way the AFN executive handled Archibald’s impeachment.
“Hire a legal team. Challenge them,” he said. “I’ll bet on RoseAnne. She’s an honourable person. Pack rats like to run with pack rats.”
Cara Currie Hall, chief of staff for former National Chief Matthew Coon Come, argued that:
“The entire validity of the organization is in question now by way of the actions of the regional chiefs,” she told APTN News.
Thaioronióhte Dan David, an award-winning journalist and former news director at APTN, says what’s happened to Archibald “is a coup.”
AFN Regional Chief Paul Prosper told APTN that the executive hasn’t found the money to conduct the forensic audit that chiefs in assembly voted for in 2022, a difficult assertion to accept given that the AFN received $39.2 million in federal cash in 2021-22.
Meanwhile, Archibald has alleged the AFN executive spent roughly $2 million since February 2021 on investigations and legal fees to oust her.
According to long-time critic and former candidate for AFN national chief, Pam Palmater, if there was some workplace policy that was violated, as the independent investigation determined, that could have been dealt with through progressive discipline rather than outright dismissal. She also said she will be looking for band chiefs to take their power back from the executive and regional chiefs in Halifax, otherwise, “this is the death knell where they don’t represent anyone, anymore and its really embarrassing.”
Stay tuned. This battle for the control, even survival, of the AFN is far from over.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of The REAL Indigenous Issues Newsletter and a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba.
