Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond

rdf:langString Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond

rdf:langString Mary Ellen Elizabeth Turpel-Lafond

rdf:langString Mary Ellen Elizabeth Turpel-Lafond

rdf:langString Norway House Cree Nation, Manitoba or Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

rdf:langString Activist, lawyer, former judge, academic

rdf:langString Mary Ellen Elizabeth Turpel-Lafond OC is a Canadian lawyer, former judge, and legislative advocate for children's rights. She was appointed in 2006 as British Columbia's first Representative for Children and Youth, an independent position reporting to the Legislative Assembly. She was re-appointed to a second five-year term in 2011. Turpel-Lafond has claimed to be the first Treaty Indian to be appointed to the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan, as she had claimed to be a member of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. This claim to be a Treaty Indian has been disputed, however. Time Magazine has twice bestowed honours upon Turpel-Lafond, naming her as one of the "100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow" in 1994, and in 1999 as one of the "Top 20 Canadian Leaders for the 21st Century". She has been invested into the Order of Canada, and is celebrated as among the most accomplished First Nations scholars in the history of Canada. In 2022, various biographical claims made by Turpel-Lafond came under media scrutiny, including her claimed place of birth on a First Nations reserve, her claimed Cree ancestry, her claim of receiving an LLM from the University of Cambridge, her claim of being made Queen's Counsel in Saskatchewan, her claim of being a member of the Law Society of Saskatchewan and the Law Society of Nova Scotia, her claim of having co-authored a book with University of British Columbia professor Grant Charles, and her claim of holding an honorary doctorate from First Nations University of Canada.