Canadian Classroom 15 questions to test your knowledge

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Editor's note: March 7th begins International Women's Week and a celebration of the contributions that women have made around the world. Windspeaker uses the Canadian Classroom page this month for a quiz that will remind readers of the remarkable Aboriginal women who have shaped our societies with their achievements over the years. Their stories provide encouragement to all-men and women, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.

1. Who was the first Aboriginal woman elected to the House of Commons in Canada?

2. Who was the first Aboriginal woman elected as a government leader?

3. She was the first Aboriginal woman, and first Metis person, to hold a seat in Canada's Senate.

4. She was Canada's first ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs.

5. Thanks to her successful appeal to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, Native women in Canada would no longer lose their status under the Indian Act through marriage to non-Native men.

6. This woman was the first Aboriginal person-man or woman-to be appointed by the federal government to a superior court of law.

7. She was the first First Nations woman in Canada to obtain a law degree.

8. Who initiated the first Indian controlled education institute in North America?

9. On the 100th anniversary of her birth, a commemorative stamp was released to honor this well-known Aboriginal poet.

10. She won a bronze medal in the 3,000-metre race at the Barcelona Olympic Summer Games in 1992.

11. This co-captain of the 2000 Canadian Olympic water polo team was the first woman named as Carlton University's athlete of the year three consecutive times.

12. She received a Gemini award for best actress in 1997.

13. This singer/songwriter won an Academy Award in 1982.

14. She is chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Inuit organization that represents the interests of the Inuit peoples of northern Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia.

15. This member of Gordon First Nation (Saskatchewan) is one of the few women in Canada and all of the Aboriginal world to become a neuro-psychiatrist.

ANSWERS:

1. Ethel Blondin Andrew-Liberal, Yukon, elected in 1988. In 1993 she was also the first to be appointed to the federal cabinet when she became Minister of State for Youth and Training.

2. Nellie Cournoyea, elected in 1991 as government leader of the Northwest Territories. She was also the first Aboriginal woman elected to the N.W.T. legislature (1979).

3. Thelma Chalifoux, who just retired in February after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75. She was called to the Senate in 1997 by former prime minister Jean Chretien.

4. Mary May Simon was appointed Ambassador of Circumpolar Affairs on Oct. 31, 1994, becoming the first Inuk to hold an ambassadorial position. Simon was born in Kangirsualujuak (George River), Nunavik.

5. Sandra Lovelace, Tobique First Nation, N.B. After the dissolution of her marriage to a non-Native American airman, Sandra Lovelace and her children returned to her home community only to be denied the housing, education and health care that would be afforded those with status under the Indian Act. After a 10-year battle that took her to an international forum for justice, Lovelace's status was restored under Bill C-31. She was not the first woman to be re-enfranchised, however. That honor went to Mary Two-Axe Early in 1984, a Mohawk from Kahnawake (Quebec).

6. Rose Boyko was appointed to the Ontario Superior Court in 1994. She was awarded a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 1999. Her biography can be found online at www.amma.com.

7. Roberta Jamieson is not only the first First Nations woman in Canada to obtain a law degree, she is also the first Aboriginal woman to hold the post of Ontario Ombudsman and the first woman to be elected chief of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario.

8. Ida Wasacase was born on the Ochapowace First Nation (Saskatchewan). In the mid-70s, she initiated the establishment of the Saskatchewan IndianFederated College, now known as the First Nations University of Canada. When the college first opened it had an enrolment of just nine students. Today the average enrolment is 1,300 students.

9. In 1961, Emily Pauline Johnson was commemorated for her contribution to Canadian literature. Her name and likeness adorned a five-cent postage stamp issued March 10 of that year. The Mohawk woman is remembered particularly for her poem The Song My Paddle Sings.

10. Track and Field star Angela Chalmers. Her first major national competition was in 1981 at the Canada Summer Games in Thunder Bay where she won two silver medals in the 800- and 1,500-metre events. That led to a spot on the 1988 Canadian Olympic team. At the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, she became the first woman in the history to win both the 1,500- and 3,000-metre races. Four years later, the 30-year-old Chalmers successfully defended her 3,000-metre crown in dramatic fashion at the Victoria Commonwealth Games breaking both the Canadian and Commonwealth records.

11. Waneek Horn-Miller won 20 gold medals at the Indigenous games between 1990 and 1997, and was an integral part of the senior Canadian women's water polo team that won the gold medal at the 1999 Pan-American games in Winnipeg. Horn-Miller first made headlines not for her sporting achievements, however, but for something that happened at Oka during the crisis of 1990, when at the age of 14 she was stabbed in the chest by a soldier's bayonet. The bayonet blade was deflected off her sternum, mitigating the injury.

12. Tina Keeper was nominated for a Gemini in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuous Leading Dramatic Role each year from 1994 to 1998 for her portrayal of RCMP Constable Michelle Kenidi on the CBC television show North of 60, but a win in that category didn't come until 1997.

13. Buffy Sainte-Marie was born on the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan. She received the Academy Award in 1982 for her song, "Up Where We Beong" from the movie An Officer And A Gentleman. Her music first won international acclaim in the 1960s when her song "Universal Soldier" became an anthem of the peace movement. Her song "Until It's Time for You to Go" has been recorded by more than 200 artists in 16 languages. Sainte-Marie helped develop the Juno Awards category-The Best Music of Aboriginal Canada. The Juno Awards will be held in Edmonton on April 4. Among the nominees for this year's Aboriginal Recording of the Year are Susan Aglukark for Big Feeling and Sandy Scofield for Ketwam.

14. Sheila Watt Cloutier was born in the tiny community of Kuujjuaq in Northern Quebec and is an advocate for the people and environment of the circumpolar region. She was successful in persuading states to sign a global agreement to ban the generation and use of persistent organic pollutants, such as DDT and PCBs, that contaminate the Arctic food chain. For this work she received the inaugural global environmental award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations.

15. Dr. Lillian Eva Dyck was put in the "slow room" when she attended grade school in Swift Current, Sask., and may have languished there, but for the special interest one perceptive teacher took in her. Dyck went on to earn a PhD and become a full professor in the University of Saskatchewan's Department of Psychiatry were she studies Alzheimer Disease and other diseases of the brain. FYI: March 10 to 16 is Brain Awareness Week.