King Charles meets Mary Simon, Indigenous leaders. Image credit: Tweet @HelenMichell12
London//CMEDIA: During King Charles’ meeting with Canadian Indigenous leaders and the Governor General on Thursday, the audience at Buckingham Palace included Assembly of First Nations Chief RoseAnne Archibald, Métis National Council president Cassidy Caron and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed, who will all be attending the coronation on Saturday.
“Today was a historic day for Indigenous peoples, for Canada, and for our relationship with the Crown,” Governor General Mary Simon said in a statement. “Days before his Coronation, His Majesty King Charles III showed his commitment to reconciliation in a meeting with Indigenous leaders.”
As the Monarch’s representative in Canada and the country’s first Indigenous Governor General, Simon is reported to have played a pivotal role in organizing the engagement, which she called “the first of its kind.”
“The King understands the importance of walking the path of reconciliation with Canada and Indigenous peoples …forming the pillars of a renewed relationship with Indigenous peoples that is based on respect and understanding” Simon reportedly said.
While hosting visiting dignitaries this week in the run-up to his coronation on May 6, Simon and the three Indigenous leaders are the only Canadians King Charles is officially meeting prior to the event.
The meeting included conversations about the environment, entrepreneurship, repatriating cultural items from British museums, and missing and murdered Indigenous women reportedly lasted an hour.
Besides calls for the monarch to apologize for the harms of Canada’s colonial legacy, the three Indigenous leaders said the meeting was focused on building a positive relationship that could pave the way for tougher future conversations.
During King Charles’s previous visit in May 2022 to Canada, in his meeting with Canadian Indigenous leaders, he was reported saying in a closing speech in Yellowknife that he was “deeply moved” by stories from the residential school survivors he had met.
“To be able to sit down as First Nations, Metis and Inuit and share with him who we are and what our priorities are as a people, and identify the ways that we can work together into the future, is really important to us,” Caron of the Métis National Council reportedly said.
The participants invited the monarch to visit their communities anc consented to have another virtual meeting before the end of the year.
Simon was reported saying that she would continue to encourage all Canadians, as well as the Crown, to take action on reconciliation and hoped for an improved Crown-Indigenous relationship in the coming years
In a joint-statement, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and Métis National Council characterized the meeting as being about deepening relationships.
“His Majesty the King shared information about his interests and priorities, including climate change and Indigenous knowledge, housing and moving forward on issues related to reconciliation,” the statement said. “All leaders recognized the positive nature of the discussion and felt that the meeting was more than symbolic but was in fact a sincerely meaningful meeting and the start of a new relationship with this new Monarch.”
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