Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday appointed Mary Simon as the new official representative of Queen Elizabeth II, the first indigenous woman in this post, he said during a press briefing.
“We are honored to have Ms. Simon as the first Aboriginal Governor General,” he said. “Today, after 154 years, our country is taking an important step. I don’t see a better person at the moment, ”added Justin Trudeau.
A bereaved country
For several weeks, Canada has been bereaved by the discovery of more than a thousand anonymous graves were discovered in three former residential schools for indigenous people in the provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan in the west of the country.
About 150,000 Amerindian, Métis and Inuit children, cut off from their families, their language and their culture, were forcibly recruited from the beginning of the 19th century until the 1990s in 139 boarding schools across the country, in order to be assimilated. to the dominant culture.