AMC News

She was on the front lines of dogged fights against injustices, including a recent series of murders of Indigenous women by a white man.

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Kim Wheeler

Matina Stevis-Gridneff reported from Toronto and Kim Wheeler from Winnipeg.

Published in the New York Times, Sept. 17, 2024

Cathy Merrick, a towering figure in the fight for Indigenous rights in Canada and the first woman to be elected grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, representing 63 First Nations, died on Sept. 6 in Winnipeg, the provincial capital. She was 63.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs announced her death in a statement.

Ms. Merrick died while doing what she had dedicated her life to: advocating for Indigenous people. She had just attended the trial of a corrections officer who had been charged in the death of an Indigenous inmate. The man had been acquitted, and Ms. Merrick was standing on the courthouse steps expressing her disappointment to the news media when she suddenly collapsed.

She was taken to nearby St. Boniface hospital, where she was declared dead. The cause was not immediately known, and an autopsy was to be performed.

Ms. Merrick’s death was met with deep grief across Canada. Hundreds attended her wake as she lay in state last week at the Manitoba Legislative Building, only the sixth person and the first woman ever to receive that honor.

“Grand Chief Cathy Merrick was a relentless and incredibly effective advocate for First Nations peoples, especially for those most vulnerable,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said in a statement.

Catherine Ann McKay, whose traditional Cree name was Kameekosit Ispokanee Iskwew, was born on May 31, 1961, at Cross Lake, the English name for the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, in northern Manitoba. She was the adopted daughter of Hazel and Thomas Spence. Her mother was a nurse, her father a carpenter.

Cathy graduated from the MacKay Residential School in Dauphin, Manitoba, in 1979 and later took a business management program at Yellowquill University College, in Winnipeg, graduating in 1993.

She became involved in politics first as a councilor for the Cree people in Pimicikamak and was later elected their chief.

Ms. Merrick was elected grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs in October 2022, becoming the first woman to hold that post. The assembly represents the political and diplomatic interests of 63 First Nations in the province. She was re-elected in July.

She is survived by her husband of 30 years, Todd Merrick; her sons Kyle, Chad and Cayden; a daughter, Teagan; 13 grandchildren; and 10 siblings.

Ms. Merrick’s life and work unfolded against the backdrop of Canada’s slow, incomplete reckoning with its treatment of First Nations people. In 2008, the prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper, made an official apology for decades of forced assimilation of Indigenous children, who had often been torn from their families and placed in abusive educational facilities known as residential schools. The last one of them closed in 1997.

In the years since that apology, and under Mr. Trudeau, Canada has made more gestures to acknowledge these wrongs. In cosmopolitan Toronto, for example, it is standard for major events to begin with an acknowledgment of the Indigenous people whose land the city is built on.

But in practical terms, many First Nations around the country continue to face living conditions akin to those found in the developing world. Most of these nations are underfunded and have poor education, health care services and infrastructure.

Ms. Merrick’s decades of public service were aimed at alleviating some of these conditions.

“Aboriginal people are in crisis in Canada,” she told The New York Times in 2016, when she rallied support from the provincial government and a major local company to pay for emergency health care services, a crisis hotline and a youth recreation center amid a spate of suicides at Cross Lake.

Her work never got easier.

Her highest-profile battle was to recover the remains of two of four Indigenous women who were murdered by a 35-year-old white man in 2022. The bodies were dumped in unidentified locations in a sprawling landfill in Winnipeg. The serial killings were said to be racially motivated.

Together with family members of the slain women, Ms. Merrick took the issue all the way to Mr. Trudeau’s office in Ottawa. The authorities originally opposed searching the landfill but eventually relented, committing millions of dollars to the task. The search for the remains is set to start next month.

After the man was sentenced on Aug. 28 to 25 years in prison without parole, Ms. Merrick made an emotional statement to the news media.

“Today is a very important day,” she said. “Today sets a precedent, that if you attack a First Nations woman, you will be held accountable.”

Cambria Harris, a daughter of one of the victims, Morgan Harris, said of Ms. Merrick in an interview, “She truly fought for her people until the end, and that is absolutely honorable.” She called her death “devastating.”

Political battles aside, Ms. Merrick was known to her family and the broader community for her joie de vivre. People remarked on her tendency to warmly hug friends, strangers and even foes. She liked to wear traditional artisanal ribbon skirts over trousers, and medallions and beaded adornments around the neck. Sometimes, colleagues said, she would take them off on the spot and give them as gifts to people who complimented her.

Cindy Woodhouse, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, which represents more than 600 First Nations across Canada, said in an interview that Ms. Merrick’s career had been consequential for female representation in male-dominated Indigenous politics and that it had also made her own rise easier.

She recalled the time when the two went to a traditional ceremony to seek approval from elders to wear headdresses reserved for men in leadership, a request that aroused significant opposition.

“It was easier when you got a sister standing beside you,” Ms. Woodhouse said. But she added that Ms. Merrick had also taught her “to call out when there’s injustices in the world, even if you’re standing by yourself.”

Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country. More about Matina Stevis-Gridneff