Roberta Jamieson to receive Honorary Degree from Algonquin College

Posted on Monday, May 31st, 2021

Algonquin College will present Indigenous activist, lawyer and mediator Roberta Jamieson with an Honorary Degree at its virtual convocation ceremony on June 23.

Over her long, varied career, Jamieson has worked tirelessly to advocate for First Nations, Inuit and Métis people across Canada. As the Chief Executive Officer and President of Indspire from 2004 to 2020, she helped expand the organization – which aims to improve Indigenous communities’ access to post-secondary education – to become the largest Indigenous-led charity in Canada. In her 16 years as CEO, she grew the organization’s bursary program eight-fold, launched the Indigenous Research Knowledge Nest, and vastly expanded its other programs, resources, and initiatives, engaging government, the private sector and thousands of individual Canadians in the process. Under Jamieson’s leadership, Indspire was recognized as one of the Top 10 Charities of Impact in Canada.

Raised on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Jamieson is also an internationally recognized leader in non-adversarial dispute resolution, having acted as a mediator between First Nations communities and the federal and provincial governments of Canada for many years.

As this group of Algonquin College students graduate, Jamieson knows just how pivotal and life-changing a student’s educational experience can be. Initially planning to become a doctor, Jamieson was studying pre-med at McGill University in the early 1970s when she became involved in the political struggle of the James Bay Cree against the Quebec government’s decision to build a hydroelectric dam on their traditional hunting and fishing territory. The experience led her to not only change career paths, but also brought her to achieve one of her many firsts.

While observing legal trials over the dam project, she had a revelation. “I thought, if we’re ever going to solve issues between our people and others in Canada,” explains Jamieson, “we need some of these tools in our toolbox. And so off I went to law school to get those tools.”

In 1976, when she graduated from the University of Western Ontario, she became the first First Nations woman in Canada to earn a law degree. Over the coming years, she would also become Ontario’s first woman ombudsman, the first woman elected chief of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, the first Indigenous commissioner of the Indian Commission of Ontario, and the first non-parliamentarian appointed to a House of Commons committee.

Of her many firsts, Jamieson says they were not intentional. “I didn’t seek to be first at anything,” she says. “The opportunities were there, and I felt it was important to seize the opportunities and to occupy the space that had not been occupied by our people, or by women, because I felt those voices were lacking and I felt a sense of responsibility that if the opportunity presented itself, I felt an obligation to take it up.”

“Roberta Jamieson’s lifelong devotion to improving First Nations, Inuit and Métis students’ access to– and support in– education, as well as her decades of work mediating between Indigenous communities and the federal and provincial governments of Canada, has– and will continue to have– a profound impact in Canada for generations to come,” said Algonquin College President and CEO Claude Brulé. “As we continuously look for new ways to improve the experience of our Indigenous learners, we are inspired by the initiatives and programs Jamieson launched to better support Indigenous students in her time as President and CEO of Indspire.”

Jamieson is now working to create change by serving as a corporate board member at a number of organizations. She is currently on the Board of Directors at Deloitte.


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