Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer, grand chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke
Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer, 41, has made history as the first woman and the first LGBTQ2S person to be elected grand chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, according to CBC Radio Canada. Sky-Deer, who was elected with 573 votes, served as council chief for 12 years.
The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke is the organization that provides governmental, administrative, and operational services to the community of Kahnawà:ke, located in Quebec, Canada, just outside of Montreal.
Sky-Deer succeeds Grand Chief Joseph Norton, who died last August.
Sky-Deer has said on her Facebook page that she wants to be a leader who would “restore trust in our institutions by decolonizing them and who encourages the people back to the roots of the great Tree of Peace, Tionerahtase’kó:wa.”
Mike Delisle, grand chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawakes from 2004 to 2015, told Radio Canada that Sky-Deer is “an extremely intelligent woman” who went away to attend university and to work and then returned to her home community to “share her ‘wares,’ so to speak.” He added that she will be “a great asset for us, as a speaker, as a traditional person — knowing and understanding the values that are taught in the longhouse.”
Delisle said that election not only a woman but a member of the LGBTQ community is a step in the right direction for the Kahnawà:ke community.
According to the Montreal Gazette, Sky-Deer has a BA in psychology from the University of Central Florida in Orlando and was a star quarterback for the Daytona Beach Barracudas of the Women’s Professional Football League in the early 2000s. She is married, with five step-children and two grandchildren, and she and her wife live in the Kahnawà:ke community.
Sky-Deer told the Gazette she hopes to light the path for other LGBTQ2S people in First Nations communities.
— Tammye Nash
