Simonie Michael, also known as Simonee Michael, was a politician from the Eastern Northwest Territories, later Nunavut, Canada, who became the first elected Inuk legislator in Canada. As a carpenter and business owner, and one of very few translators between Inuktitut and English, Michael became heavily involved in community activism in Iqaluit, and was a prominent member of the Inuit co-operative housing movement. As the first elected Inuk member of the Northwest Territories Legislative Council, he worked on infrastructural and public health initiatives. He is credited with bringing public attention to the failings of the disc number system that was used in place of surnames for Inuit people, and with prompting the government to authorise Project Surname to replace the numbers with names.
Early life
Michael was born near Apex, Iqaluit. His adoptive father, Tigullagaq, worked for the Hudson's Bay Company. While Michael was a child during World War II, the United States Air Force constructed several air bases around Iqaluit, and employed him in a series of jobs: as a dish washer, cook, stock boy, quartermaster, and later a heavy equipment operator. Michael used this opportunity to learn English at a time when nobody in Iqaluit could translate between English and Inuktitut, and he quickly became noted for his skill as a translator. By the mid-1950s, he was the only Inuk in Iqaluit who could translate between Inuktitut and English.
Self-employment and activism
Before his election to the Northwest Territories Legislative Council at the age of 33, Michael worked as a carpenter, later also running a taxi and bus service and a large cleaning service. He was also a prominent activist in Iqaluit. Michael founded a housing co-operative that built 15 new houses in Iqaluit, at a time when the co-operative movement was a major focus of Inuit activism and would quickly become the largest private sector employer of Indigenous people. Ronald Duffy writes that Michael "had been named to just about every Iqaluit council and board in which Inuit a voice", including the municipal council that preceded the Iqaluit City Council. Michael was one of two Inuit chosen in 1953 to attend the Coronation of Elizabeth II as representatives of Canada.
Political career
Michael was encouraged to run in the 1966 by-election to the Northwest Territories Legislative Council by Stuart Milton Hodgson, later the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories. The creation of several new districts had left three openings for one-year terms to the council without any incumbents. Michael contested the election in the Eastern Arctic district against two non-Inuit candidates — Waldy Phipps, the president of an aviation company, and Gordon Rennie, the manager of a Hudson's Bay Company store — and Michael won a place in the 5th Northwest Territories Legislative Council. This made him the first elected Inuk legislator in a Canadian province or territory, preceding Peter Ittinuar's election as the first Inuk member of the federal government. Michael has also been called the first elected aboriginal Canadian, although that distinction belongs toFrank Arthur Calder. Though Michael was Canada's first elected Inuk legislator, he was its second Inuk legislator overall, since Abe Okpik had been appointed to the Northwest Territories Legislative Council in 1965. As a signal of his advocacy for Inuit issues, Michael's inaugural speech to the Legislative Assembly after his election lasted 90 minutes and was given in Inuktitut, although the legislature adopted a rule that all subsequent comments would have to be in English. The issue that Michael is most closely identified with is the first legislative action on the question of Inuit disc numbers. In the 1940s, the Government of Canada had determined that it was unable to track Inuit using their traditional names, and it assigned numbers to individual Inuit using a type of dog tag system. Michael spoke out against this system in the Legislative Assembly, explaining that his mail was sent to Simonie E7-551 rather than Simonie Michael, and protesting to the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories that his mail should be sent to his full name. Although this issue had been raised previously by Abe Okpik in the Legislative Assembly and was becoming increasingly salient, Michael is widely credited with attracting the attention of the press and prompting the government to pass a motion authorising Project Surname, in which Okpik spent the years between 1968 and 1971 traveling throughout the Eastern Northwest Territories and recording the preferred surnames of Inuit to replace their disc numbers. Michael's speech about the disc number system to the territorial council has been identified as the trigger that led to the system's end. Michael was also involved in several administrative or infrastructural motions while in the legislature. In response to a rise in alcoholism, he prompted a referendum that restricted the availability of liquor in Iqaluit in the late 1960s. He also pushed for the creation of greater infrastructure for bringing necessities like health care to Iqaluit, as a replacement for the practice of taking those who needed care away from Iqaluit to receive treatment, which separated them from their family and community.
Legacy
Michael was elected only 16 years after Inuit people gained the right to vote in 1950, and only 4 years after the franchise was truly expanded in 1960 by making ballot boxes widely available in Inuit communities. This expansion of voting rights remained controversial; for example, in 1962, then-Senator Thomas Crerar called it an "error" and advocated revoking the right for Inuit in the Eastern Arctic to vote. Given this context, Eva Aariak, while the Premier of Nunavut, described Michael's election as "an important step forward in the evolution of our territory and its democratic institutions." Similarly, Peter Kulchyski and Frank James Tester identify Michael as an important member of a "unique" generation of Inuit leaders "who seized their time to forge a new politics in the arctic", and whose leadership "deserves special recognition".
