Honourable senators, as I rise today in this chamber on the unceded lands of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, I am honoured to draw the Senate’s attention to a remarkable visionary and indefatigable fighter for justice, Andrea Paul, our new regional chief for Nova Scotia, former chief of Pictou Landing First Nation and the first ever woman to represent our region at the Assembly of First Nations, or AFN.

Regional Chief Paul is here in Ottawa for the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly with her counterparts from all across Canada. Andrea Paul fills the very big shoes of our colleague, former regional chief Senator Prosper, who revealed his gifts of intelligence, eloquence and authenticity in his first speech in this chamber last evening.

Colleagues, Chief Andrea Paul is best known in her community and in our region for her dedication to education and to the environment. She is a teacher. She was an education counsellor for years. This past weekend, she received her Master of Education and the famous X-Ring at St. Francis Xavier University. Her good friend St. Francis Xavier professor Dr. Lisa Lunney Borden is impressed with Andrea Paul’s dedication to her community and to always doing the right thing.

Probably best known for her decades-long fight for the local environment, Chief Paul and members of her Pictou Landing Mi’kmaq community were successful in persuading the Nova Scotia government to live up to past promises and end the flow of toxic wastewater effluent from the Northern Pulp mill into Boat Harbour.

Chief Paul’s fight for environmental justice was highlighted in There’s Something in the Water, a film on environmental racism directed by Elliot Page and Ian Daniel. Boat Harbour, originally a tidal estuary, was considered to be one of Nova Scotia’s worst cases of environmental racism. Chief Paul had online threats to her life and received a letter including a drawing of an Indigenous person and a Black person hanging from a tree with a threatening message.

While swearing the oath of her new office, Regional Chief Paul wore a beautiful headdress with hieroglyphics that evoke her life and passions — the water, the environment, her people, her beloved grandson and one that symbolizes the act of listening, which she says will be key to her new role representing her Mi’kmaq people.

Honourable senators, please join me in congratulating Regional Chief Andrea Paul and wish her well as she seeks, in her own words, to see real movement and positive change in the Mi’kmaq communities of Nova Scotia.

Wela’lioq, thank you.