Controversial chief fails in bid for higher office
Drew attention to impoverished Attawapiskat
After a five-year tenure as chief of Attawapiskat marked by controversy, Theresa Spence resigned to seek a larger political role only to be rebuffed by her fellow chiefs this week.
Spence was seeking election as one of the three deputy grand chiefs of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the political organization representing the 49 First Nations of northern Ontario.
But after a day of speeches Wednesday by the nine candidates for deputy grand chief and voting by chiefs assembled at the Aroland First Nation, she received just three votes on the first ballot. Finishing in a tie for second last, she chose to drop out of the race. Earlier, Alvin Fiddler had been elected grand chief.
Spence rose to national prominence in 2012 when she went on a liquid diet and said she was prepared to die if the prime minister and governor general did not agree to meet with chiefs to discuss living conditions on the country’s reserves.
While she helped to elevate indigenous issues onto the political agenda and raise awareness of the lack of housing and clean water on remote reserves, it resulted in little action, said Christopher Alcantara, a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. “Her legacy is more symbolic than anything,” he said.
Whether her failed run for deputy grand chief spells the end of Spence’s political career is uncertain. She could not be reached for comment.
Staff at the Attawapiskat band office said they were preparing to hold a community vote Friday to decide how to fill the vacant chief ’s position. The options are to hold an election; shift power to Louis Edwards, the deputy chief, or give the position to Bruce Shisheesh, the top runner-up in the last election.
While Spence camped in a teepee on Ottawa’s Victoria Island, limiting herself to medicinal tea and fish broth for six weeks, a governmentordered audit raising questions about her band’s financial management was leaked to the media.
The audit, covering 200511, did not find evidence of misappropriation of funds. But it concluded about 80 per cent of the transactions analyzed — representing about $104 million in funding provided by Ottawa — lacked proper supporting documents. At the time, Spence denounced the audit as a “witch hunt.”
In 2011, she declared a state of emergency over conditions on the reserve of about 1,800. At the time, the band said 24 families were living in tents or sheds without running water and another 122 homes were fit to be condemned or in need of serious repairs.
Appearing last September before the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, Spence said of the 329 units on the reserve, 73 required immediate replacement and 193 required major repairs. “Most of our people are living in overcrowded housing, in substandard homes, contaminated by mould and sewage,” she said.
In 2014, Spence’s commonlaw spouse, Clayton Kennedy, was charged with fraud over a cheque written while he was co-manager of the Attawapiskat band.
Spence, who was re-elected in 2013 and that year earned a tax-free salary of $82,984, resigned as chief of Attawapiskat with a year left in her mandate.
The resignation caught residents by surprise.
Jackie Hookimaw Witt told CBC she learned about Spence’s resignation on Facebook.
“People f elt shock and they were saying, ‘Is she not abandoning us? Shouldn’t she have consulted with us first?’ Those are the words I heard, talking to people on the street,” she said.