Early life and education[edit]
Simon was born Mary Jeannie May[4] on August 21, 1947,[7] in Fort Severight (now Kangiqsualujjuaq), Quebec,[8] to Bob May, who was from Manitoba and of English descent,[9] and to her mother, Nancy, an Inuk.[10][11] Her father had relocated to the north in his youth[12] and became manager of the local Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) store during the early 1950s.[11][13] He said that he was the first white employee to marry an Inuk, which the HBC banned at the time.[14] Mary Simon's Inuk name is Ningiukudluk.[4]
Simon was raised in a traditional Inuit lifestyle, including hunting, fishing, sewing Inuit clothing, and travelling by dog sled.[4][15] She credits her mother and maternal grandmother Jeannie Angnatuk for passing on Inuit oral history to her.[4][10]
Simon attended federal day school in Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq),[16] then Fort Carson High School in Colorado, and completed her high school via correspondence in Fort Chimo.
Career[edit]
Early career[edit]
Simon taught Inuktitut at McGill University.[17] From 1969 to 1973, she worked as a producer and announcer for the CBC Northern Service.[18]
Simon began her career as a public servant by being elected secretary of the board of directors of the Northern Quebec Inuit Association. In 1978, she was elected as vice-president, and later president, of the Makivik Corporation. She held the position until 1985.
During this period she also became involved with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada's national Inuit organization.[19] Simon was one of the senior Inuit negotiators during the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, the First Ministers' conferences that took place from 1982 to 1992, as well as the 1992 Charlottetown Accord discussions.
She served as a member of the Nunavut Implementation Commission and as co-director (policy) and secretary to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.[19]
Diplomatic career[edit]
She took on a variety of roles for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC). First she served as an Executive Council member from 1980 to 1983, then as president from 1986 to 1992, and then as Special Envoy from 1992 to 1994.[19] During this period she assisted in obtaining approval from the Russian government to allow the Inuit of the Chukotka Peninsula to participate in ICC. In 1986, as president of the ICC, Simon led a delegation of Canadian, Alaskan, and Greenland Inuit to Moscow and then to Chukotka to meet with Russian officials as well as the Inuit of the far east of Russia. In 1987 the ICC was successful in efforts that resulted in the Russian government allowing Russian Inuit to attend the 1989 ICC General Assembly held in Alaska.