The remarkable life of Marion Ironquil Meadmore

Miles Morrisseau
ICT

Fri, March 7, 2025

Marion Ironquil Meadmore – one of Canada’s first Indigenous women lawyers who worked decades to empower Indigenous people – died Feb. 19 at age 89.

Meadmore died peacefully at home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, surrounded by family.

In addition to her legal career, she was a founding member in 1961 of the National Indian Council, which eventually would split into two national organizations, the Assembly of First Nations and the Native Council of Canada.

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And she co-founded the first Indian and Métis Friendship Centre in 1959 in Winnipeg to provide support and services, including a space for celebrations both cultural and familial, for Indigenous people living in the city.

The Friendship Centre Movement eventually spread across Canada to become the heartbeat of the urban Indigenous community, and the centres remain vital today from coast to coast. She also co-founded Kinew Housing, the first Indigenous housing corporation in Canada.

“Marion was a force for change, a visionary who built institutions that continue to advance First Nations sovereignty, rights, and self-determination,” said Assembly of Manitoba Grand Chief Kyra Wilson. “Her impact is immeasurable, and her legacy will continue to guide our Nations for generations. We extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends, and all who were inspired by her work.”

Delia Opekokew, Cree from Canoe Lake, Saskatchewan, was a friend and colleague who attended law school with Meadmore.

“She had an impact nationally in several ways,” Opekokew told ICT from her home in Toronto. “They laid the groundwork nationally in promoting Indigenous interests.”

Meadmore was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1985, and in 2015, the University of Manitoba awarded her the Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement.

She was preceded in death by her husband of 56 years, Ron Meadmore, who died in 2013. She is survived by their three sons – Glen; Neil and his wife Kelleanne, and three children Dakota, Kayla, and Connor; and Jim (Lorraine); as well as her sister Doris Hyndford.

Years of activism

Marion Ironquil was born on July 11, 1935, on the Peepeekisis First Nation located in the Qu’Appelle Valley in southern Saskatchewan. Her mother was Cree and her father, Joe Ironquil, was Ojibway. Her father became chief of the Peepeekisis First Nation when she was a child.

Around the age of six, she attended one of Canada’s most notorious residential schools, File Hills, but she did not have to spend nights at the school because it was located on the reserve. She went on to attend boarding school in Strasbourg, Saskatchewan, then the Birtle Indian Residential School.

Marion Ironquil Meadmore, shown here in 1970, one of Canada's first Indigenous women lawyers, helped build organizations to empower Indigenous people in Canada, including the precursor to the Assemply of First Nations. She died Feb. 19, 2025, at her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, at age 89. (Archive photo via the University of Manitoba)More

She initially enrolled as a pre-med student at the University of Manitoba, but three years later married Ron Meadmore, who at the time was a star player for the University of Manitoba football team. Meamore, described as a large farm boy, would go on to play 12 years in the Canadian Football League, winning the Grey Cup with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1958, 1959 and 1961.

She became editor of The Prairie Call, a newspaper published in 1961 that shared community events, features and stories by Indigenous writers. According to Canadian Encyclopedia, “Meadmore used the paper to discuss human rights issues and the realities of urban life, to build community and address Indigenous peoples’ legal and socio-economic challenges.”

The same year, she co-founded the National Indian Council, to represent both treaty/status and non-status Indians, as well as the Métis people. The Inuits went a different way.

In 1971, the Métis and non-status Indians founded the Native Council of Canada, which later became the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. The work to bring Indigenous people together in Canada eventually led to the formation of the Assembly of First Nations in 1982, an outgrowth of the National Indian Brotherhood.

“At some point, she and her board of directors made a decision that they should invite provincial leaders from across Canada to meet in Toronto with a view of them taking over their work,” Opekokew said. “That was the founding of the Native Council of Canada and the National Indian Brotherhood, before it became the Assembly of First Nations.”

The Assembly of First Nations has since grown into a powerful organization that represents the interests of First Nations people in Ottawa.

In 1970, Meadmore was a founding member of Kinew Housing, which continues to provide affordable housing to Indigenous people in the city of Winnipeg. Opekokew said the project followed a study of urban Indigenous housing conditions in the city.




“One of the stories she told me was that she found these two people from the north living in a cheap hotel … and they had raw moose meat,” Opekokew said. “That's all they could afford to eat in the room. And so she saw those kinds of conditions in the city.”

She returned to the University of Manitoba after her children were older, and in 1977 she graduated with her law degree.

“Long before she arrived at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law, from which she graduated in 1977, she was already working to decolonize spaces for and empower Indigenous people,” Richard Jochelson, the law school dean, said in a statement. “Since the mid-1950s, she was involved with founding numerous organizations and institutions that serve as models for similar initiatives across the country, including the precursors to the Manitoba Métis Federation and the Indigenous Bar Association.”

‘Undeniable and profound’

In addition to her commitment to education and justice, Meadmore loved sports.




Opekokew says that it was their shared love of sports that bonded the two woman, and helped motivate her older friend.

”She used to use sports as an incentive to drag me to the library so we could study,” she said. “My study skills were very poor. Hers were phenomenal. And so I used to think she was crazy to be sitting in the library on a Sunday or a Saturday, hour after hour. So I acquired that habit. And I think that's how I went through law school. But her incentive was, after we finished studying, we could go and play. And we would.”

Meadmore would go on to win a gold medal at the inaugural North American Indigenous Games, which took place in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1990. She was 55 and the regular pitcher for Winnipeg’s Arrowettes baseball team.

In recent years she co-founded the National Indigenous Council of Elders, which aims to help Indigenous entrepreneurs create business without government support.


“Marion Ironquil Meadmore has spent her life championing ideas of Indigenous nationhood, while creating organizations that inspire Indigenous Peoples to regain equality and economic independence in the wake of colonialism,” the University of Manitoba said in a statement in 2024, when she received an honorary doctoral degree.

“Marion Ironquil Meadmore’s experiences and contributions are undeniable and profound.”


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