Former chief promoted Indigenous rights
A former Siksika chief and elder is being remembered for his activism for Indigenous communities.
Roy Little Chief died Thursday at age 81.
For more than 50 years, Little Chief worked to promote the rights of Indigenous communities across Canada, according to a release from Siksika Nation on behalf of Little Chief ’s family.
Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Eagle Rib — who signed Treaty 7 — Little Chief became a leader in his community and was elected to the Siksika Nation Council in a byelection that led to his becoming chief from 1981 to 1983.
Little Chief was born Aug. 26, 1938, in the Blackfoot Hospital at the Siksika Nation. He was educated in residential schools in North Battleford, Sask. In the late 1960s he worked with the Indian Association of Alberta and in opposition to the Federal Government White Paper in the early 1970s that called for the elimination of separate legal status for First Nations in Canada.
“He was a central figure in the awakening of First Nations political activity, Indigenous spirituality and cultural expression. He organized support for the inclusion of Aboriginal rights in the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution in the early 1980s,” said the release.
Little Chief served on various boards and committees, including the National Residential School Survivors Society. It was, in part, due to his contributions that reparations for residential school survivors were introduced and Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established. “Roy Little Chief was vocal in calling out the racial attitudes embodied in law enforcement protocols of the Calgary Police Service and the RCMP that resulted in the unfair imprisonment of Indigenous people,” the release said.
Little Chief became chair of the Siksika police commission.
“He worked and prayed unceasingly for the full participation of all Indigenous people in the political, social, cultural and spiritual life of their Nations and of Canada,” the release said.
He was given the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002 for his activism.
Little Chief died June 11 at the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary. A memorial service will be held Thursday at the Gordon Yellow Fly Memorial Arbour on the Siksika Nation, where his wife, Linda Little Chief (Cheechoo) and family members will remember him.