Samson Cree Nation welcomes high commissioner

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Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who was appointed the United Nations high commissioner for human rights on June 12, 1997, visited the Samson Cree Nation on Nov. 27.

"I'll be much better informed when I leave here today," the high commissioner told the audience at Nipisihkopahk Secondary School as she thanked the local chiefs for their hospitality.

Robinson was in Alberta to speak at an international human rights conference hosted in Edmonton by the Canadian Human Rights Foundation and the University of Alberta. She met with a number of First Nations leaders to be briefed on human rights issues which affect Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Robinson is the co-ordinator of the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Peoples and has a strong interest in the unique problems of colonized peoples around the world. She told the gathering that her people had a first-hand connection with a North American Indigenous nation.

"My people, the Irish people, suffered a terrible tragedy, the potato famine," she said. "Up to a million died. Another two million emigrated. In 1847, in the middle of the famine, the Choctaw people of Oklahoma learned of the plight of the Irish people. They collected 173 American dollars which they sent to our people to provide relief from their suffering. When I became president of Ireland, I visited Oklahoma to formally thank the Choctaw people and tell them good deeds are not forgotten."

Later that day, Robinson joined Nobel prize winner, South African Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu and the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Antonio Lamer as the keynote speakers for the three-day conference.