Richard Atleo is a hereditary chief of the Ahousaht First Nation, an environmental scholar and a champion of education.
His work has taken him from teaching in university lecture halls to contributing to forestry reports on Clayoquot Sound, while his son, Shawn, is the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
Richard Atleo is one of five people chosen to receive an honorary degree during the University of Victoria’s spring convocation, along with Olympic cycling and speed-skating medallist Clara Hughes, First Nations health proponent William J. Mussell, supporter of First Nations entrepreneurs Frank Parnell and Mary Simon, a former Canadian ambassador to Denmark who has worked hard to improve the lives of Inuit people.
There will also be 3,458 students honoured with degrees, diplomas and certificates during nine ceremonies from Monday to Friday in the University Centre’s Farquhar Auditorium.
“It is something that touches me from my ancestry, from my cultural background,” Atleo said of the honorary degree. “It is something that we do ceremonially according to our ancient ways. It’s part of our custom to acknowledge people in a good way and I see this honouring by the University of Victoria as something that is of the same kind of spirit as that.”
Atleo likened the pursuit of education and facing challenges in the process of learning to the First Nations’ concept of a vision quest. “The vision quest process is a deliberate embrace of difficulty, it’s a deliberate challenging to the physical and mental part of our beings in order to improve, in order to grow, in order to become stronger.”
He praised his fellow honourees for their accomplishments, which include the following:
• in addition to her athletic exploits, Hughes has used the profile gained from her Olympic career to become a spokeswoman for mental-health awareness and has shared her personal struggles with depression;
• Mussell, a member of the Skwah First Nation, has studied the effects of colonization and residential schools, and is a celebrated educational leader;
• Parnell, from the Haida First Nation, has had a long career in business and has worked with UVic’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business to develop programs for First Nations businesspeople;
• Simon’s work includes helping to form the eight-nation Arctic Council, and serving as a senior Inuit negotiator in talks that led to aboriginal rights being recognized in the 1982 Constitution Act.
At the Royal Roads University spring convocation on Tuesday, honorary degrees will be conferred on Songhees First Nation elder Elmer Seniemten George, the only fluent speaker of the Lekwungen language, and Jack Austin, who has been a leader in politics, law and business.
George, a residential-school survivor, is also prominent in the Indian Shaker Church and played a major role in the building of the Songhees Big House. Austin was in the cabinets of both Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin, served in the Senate for 32 years and helped in negotiations with the United States on the Columbia River Treaty.
The Chancellor’s Community Recognition Award is going to the Inter-Cultural Association for years of helping newcomers to the country.
“We’re delighted and it’s a nice recognition after working 45 years in the community in work that we think is important,” said ICA chief executive Jean McRae, who will accept the award.
More than 729 students from 41 countries in the faculty of management and the faculty of applied and social sciences will be recognized at the Royal Roads ceremony, to be held at the Royal Theatre.
The Royal Roads ceremonies at 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. can be watched at livestream.com/royalroads while the UVic ceremonies will be live at uvic.ca/convocation, which also has a full ceremony schedule.
