Kiviaq dies fighting for Inuit rights
First Inuk lawyer 'a truly remarkable man'
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Monday, May 23, 2016
Edmonton
Two-year-old Kiviaq, his six-year-old sister Marguerite and their mother Kumatnaq suddenly left the Chesterfield/Baker Lake area around 1938 with RCMP constable Ray Ward. His father Paka along with Kumatnaq 's four other children were left behind.
Kiviaq, boxer, city alderman, lawyer and fierce advocate for Inuit rights, seen here in the 1990s, died in Edmonton April 24 at the age of 80, surrounded by close family members and his beloved cat Koko. - photo courtesy Edie Lindsay McIntyre |
No one can say if Kumatnaq left the North with her children of her own free will or whether they were forcibly removed and taken to Edmonton by the man who employed her.
Paka and Kumatnaq "were the family that cared for the RCMP that were stationed up there," according to Kiviaq's grand-niece Lindsey McIntyre, Marguerite's granddaughter and a filmmaker. "It depends what version you hear."
"Whether or not Kumatnaq wanted to leave is a really big question. I don't know, and it's impossible - at least from my perspective and the research I've done - to know if she wanted to leave, if she chose to leave or she was actually taken."
Kiviaq, who died in Edmonton April 24 at the age of 80, would grow up to leave his mark on his adoptive city and the nation.
He was known as the first Inuk lawyer in the country, a Golden Glove boxing champion at the age of 13, a football player, a City of Edmonton alderman, a popular radio host and finally, a legal activist who battled the federal government to establish Inuit rights.
Ray Ward married Kumatnaq after arriving in Edmonton. Kiviaq was renamed David Charles Ward by his step-father, a man who would turn out to be brutal to his Inuit family.
Both Kiviaq and Marguerite recount - in two separate films: Kiviaq versus Canada by Zacharias Kunuk and Her Silent Life by McIntyre - being beaten by Ward.
In Kiviaq's life, Ward is a stand-in of sorts for the Government of Canada and its rhetoric of "kill the Indian in the child" - except in this case it was kill the Inuk in the child. Kumatnaq, young David and Marguerite were forbidden to speak Inuktitut or talk about the North. Ward's repeated directive to the boy was: "You are white."
At school, he was also a target.
"With my sister and I being the only Inuit going to school in the south at the time, I was beat up a lot," Kiviaq told Nunavut News/North in 2009.
"One day, a police sergeant's son jumped me after skating and I struck back. The police said if I joined a boxing club they wouldn't press charges against me, so I joined, lost my first fight and then won my next 100 or so.
"Boxing taught me to attack things in an intelligent manner and that helped me in law, as well as university."
He was recruited to play for the Edmonton Eskimos in the mid-50s - people repeat: "the first Eskimo to play for the Eskimos." Kiviaq broke his neck before he could hit the field with the team.
A homecoming for Kiviaq
In the 70s, after a six-year stint on Edmonton city council, he lost a bid for mayor and started his law career. Still known then as David Ward, Kiviak realized as an Inuk he did not share the same rights and privileges as "Indians" under the law and Charter of Rights and Freedoms - most significantly, the right to free education.
He would later say in a 2008 interview with News/North: "Which is worse, residential school or what I had to go through? I was taken south, not allowed to talk about my culture, family life or anything and I had the hell beaten out of me. I'm not defined as native and wasn't sent to residential school. I don't have the same recourse as Indians who did."
Nevertheless, he went to law school, paying his own way on football scholarships. He was called to the bar in 1983 - the first Inuk to do so - and received a congratulatory letter from then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
In 2001, he fought the Alberta law requiring a person to have a first and last name and won.
Taking the government to task
In 2004, Kiviaq took the Government of Canada to court, insisting Inuit should enjoy "the same rights and privileges as Indians."
"The Charter of Rights and Freedoms says we're supposed to be treated equally with other natives identified by the Indian Act. To have us defined in law is the big thing I want to get done before I die," he said in 2009.
He maintained there was a misconception Inuit only live in Nunavut and stressed Inuit live all over Canada, without rights - some starving.
In 2009, when Kiviaq was finally able to travel North, McIntyre was already there. She was working on what would become a series of short films depicting her own search for the matrilineal history. She witnessed her grand-uncle arrive at the Baker Lake airport with the whole town there to welcome him.
"I was living in Baker Lake when he came up. It was an amazing journey up to the North, because he always had a problem travelling as a passenger in any vehicle. But at some point after one of his surgeries for cancer that problem went away," explains McIntyre.
"It was all of a sudden a thing that he could do. He was well into his 70s. A couple of friends and a bunch of sponsors all helped to get him up, up to his home, essentially."
There was a big homecoming celebration in Baker Lake. "There were lots of tears at the airport. It was really great that he was able to go home once before the end," said McIntyre, adding although his siblings were no longer alive, others remembered how Paka and Kumatnaq's family had been torn apart.
Meanwhile, his legal battle with Canada continued.
'We're not defined in law'
McIntyre says whatever Kiviaq "put his mind to, he could become really good at it."
"My mum says he was even a really gifted violin player when he was a kid. He really was quite talented, you know? Whatever he put his mind to he could achieve. He eventually took up horseback riding."
McIntyre's favourite memories involve being a part of Kiviaq's most peaceful times.
"I spent every weekend with him, most of my teenage years, cutting trails in the river valley. He was a really, really gifted horse trainer. Really good with animals. That was a whole other part of his life."
When he was diagnosed with cancer yet again, Kiviaq decided he was done fighting.
"He opted not to have chemo or any more surgeries. Those surgeries took so much of his life away from him. He wanted to enjoy as much of it as he could. He had an overwhelming positive outlook on life. Being kind and being generous. Being good to each other as human beings.
"He was a truly remarkable man and he did so much good for so many people."
In the 2008 film update to Kiviaq versus Canada, McIntyre interviews her grand-uncle. In it he says he expects to die before the resolution of his court case. He was battling cancer at that time, as well. He worries that the fight for Inuit rights will die with him.
"They know I have cancer. ... That's why the government, when I raise Cain, sits there and smirks and stalls, waiting 'til this stupid old jerk dies. And it will all go away again," he says.
Perhaps not.
Legal win supports Kiviaq
A recent decision on Daniels v. Canada - a case initiated by now-deceased Metis leader Harry Daniels in 1999, may be a harbinger of what is to come of the case Kiviaq initiated 12 years ago. The supreme court handed down its decision on the Daniels case April 14 - ten days before Kiviaq's death - a climactic ending to a 17-year legal battle.
Metis lawyer Jason Madden wrote a published analysis on that decision:
"The supreme court has now clarified what was apparent to most already. Parliament has legislative authority for all indigenous peoples ... Helpfully, the supreme court did not stop there. It went on to reaffirm that the Crown is in a fiduciary relationship with the Metis and all aboriginal peoples."
In the final minutes of McIntyre's short film, Kiviaq asks her: "You've heard of Metis? Part Indian and part white? Is there anything for you? You're part Inuk, part white."
His main point: "We're ignored by the federal government because we're not defined in law."
Kiviaq will go home again, one last time. His ashes will be dispersed near Baker Lake sometime over the next year. For those in Edmonton or able to travel to the city, a celebration of life will be held at the Queen Alexandra Community League May 28 from 2 to 6 p.m.
