Metis activist’s legacy lives on

Equally at home with the Everyman or the dignitary, Harry Daniels famously gave Pope John Paul II his coat at Yellowknife in 1984, and is said to have greeted Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969 when the latter — who was shot dead by police weeks later — spoke at the University of Regina.

Metis activist Daniels (19402004) was born and buried at Regina Beach, but after a storied career spent pressing indigenous issues at home and abroad — including helping to nail down Metis recognition in the Constitution Act of 1982 — perhaps his best and most significant piece of work came over a decade after his death.

When, in April 2016, the Supreme Court ruled on Daniels vs. Canada that Metis and non-status Indians are to be regarded as Indians when it comes to the law-making and obligations of the federal parliament, it marked the conclusion of a protracted struggle.

“I am just thinking about my dad,” his son Gabriel Daniels told reporters at the end of a case launched by his father and others. “He would be climbing the walls; he would be happy but he’d be focused on things to come.”

The win stemmed from an antidiscrimination action started way back in 1999, and indeed Daniels would have been happy, despite the ruling’s limitations. For although he won much recognition in other spheres — for his stage and screen acting, for example — it was urgent Metis and non-status Indian issues that drove him.

Attending the University of Saskatchewan and Carleton University, by the mid 1970s he had risen from provincial activism to head the Native Council of Canada. Later, he steered what became the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples from 1997 to 2000.

“If he got his teeth into something, then he wouldn’t let go,” Daniels’ friend Ray Hamilton told the Leader-Post last year.

To this day, Daniels’ texts such as We are the New Nation: the Metis and National Native Policy (1979) remain texts of critical importance on government-recommended reading lists on Metis culture.

As we celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017, the Leader-Post and StarPhoenix are telling the stories of 150 Saskatchewan people who helped shape the nation. Send your suggestions or feedback to sask150@postmedia.com.