Fontaine not seeking re-election

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This article was published 04/06/2009 (5995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — After almost nine years fighting it out in the trenches of national native politics, Phil Fontaine is going out on a high note.

Sources close to the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations tell The Canadian Press he’ll confirm his retirement today. Fontaine, who deeply loves his job leading Canada’s largest native advocacy group, had considered running for a record fourth, three-year term. He first won in 1997 before being unseated by Matthew Coon Come in 2000.

Fontaine reclaimed the assembly leadership in 2003 and was easily re-elected in 2006.

There is plenty of speculation Fontaine, 64, will reinvent himself in the corporate world or perhaps even as a mainstream political candidate. The federal Liberals have repeatedly wooed him over the years.

Fontaine was one of the first former students to go public with his own ordeal of sexual abuse as a boy at the Fort Alexander school in Manitoba.

Fontaine has alluded many times to his ongoing struggle with pain that so many native people carry to this day.

The AFN election is July 22 in Calgary.

— The Canadian Press