Global Courant
The deposed national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) said Thursday she has not yet decided whether she will attend the organization’s annual general meeting in Halifax next week.
“I haven’t made a final decision, I’m leaving it open,” RoseAnne Archibald said during a Facebook Live.
Archibald said she will send a memo to the more than 600 chiefs represented by the AFN asking for their feedback.
“I’m waiting for the directions from the chiefs,” Archibald said of whether or not to be there.
Archibald asked her supporters to register to participate in the rally.
“I believe we need to be mobilized,” she said.
Archibald sits in her car during Facebook Live Thursday in North Vancouver. (CBC)
Archibald has not spoken to the media since she was removed by a no-confidence vote at an AFN virtual meeting on June 28. But this was the second video she shot in her car in North Vancouver this week and posted to her Facebook page.
Nearly 500 people watched Facebook Live on Thursday.
Archibald reiterated her calls for a forensic audit of the AFN, saying the organization is “corrupt” and that regional leaders are “conspiring” for her removal.
“There’s a lot of injustice and a lot of unfairness, and a lot of side violence from what happened to me,” Archibald said.
That meeting was convened to discuss the findings of an investigation into five workplace misconduct complaints filed against Archibald last year, which found she harassed two staffers and retaliated against all five.
In Thursday’s video, Archibald called the investigation a “distraction” to “what’s really going on at the AFN.”
She has called on her supporters to tell their respective regional heads and councils to reinstate her as national head and to call for an AFN forensic audit.
“I don’t want to be restored because of my ego. I want to be restored because I have a sacred responsibility that I must fulfill,” she said in the video posted Monday.
Archibald spoke to nearly 500 people on the Facebook Live video and said she had been “conspired” by AFN regional chiefs to be removed from her position. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)
AFN is the largest Indigenous advocacy organization in Canada, representing more than 600 First Nation communities.
Archibald became the first female national leader after winning a two-day five-vote election in 2021.
She is now the first national chief to be voted out mid-term.
