Margaret Muriel Joe Commodore
Margaret Commodore was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia to William Andrew and Theresa Jean Priest Commodore. She is a member of the Stolo First Nation. She attended the Alberni Indian Residential School, Hope High School, and Vancouver Community College. In 1954, she left her job in Chilliwack, worked briefly in Hazelton, and then visited Whitehorse where her cousin was getting married. She stayed, got a job, and lived in Army housing. She was the only Indigenous woman in the Yukon softball league.1) Commodore returned to Chilliwack in 1956. She married a non-native man in 1957 so she lost her Indian Status. She had training and worked as a practical nurse from 1963 to 1970. Commodore divorced, but didn’t get back her Status. She and her two daughters arrived in the Yukon in 1965.2)
Back in Whitehorse, Margaret met and married Robert “Bobbie” Joe and they had a daughter, Sheila Anne. Joe legally adopted Margaret’s daughters, Jackie and Tracy. Margaret and Robert played fast pitch softball in the summers and Margaret also coached her daughter’s team. She was known as Muggsy Joe in those days. She volunteered at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre in Whitehorse and sat on the Board in the 1970s and again from 1982 to 1985.3)
Margaret Joe was a founding member of the Yukon Association of Non-Status Indians (YANSI). She served as vice-president from 1971 to 1974 and again from 1975 to 1978. She also served on the Board of the Yukon Indian Women’s Association (YIWA). YIWA set up the Yukon Women’s Transition Home Society in the late 1970s and opened Kaushee’s Place, a refuge for battered women and their children. In 1980, she was appointed Justice of the Peace and served as Executive Secretary to the Yukon Justice of the Peace Council from 1981 to 1985.4)
Margaret Joe was an early supporter of the Yukon New Democratic Party and was accepted as their candidate in Whitehorse North Centre in April 1982. The constituency included some of the downtown and the First Nation village in the industrial area. Nine Progressive Conservatives, six New Democrats and one Independent were elected. There were three women in the House: Margaret Joe, Bea Firth and Kathie Nukon.5) New Democratic Party MLA Commodore and Progressive Conservative MLA Bea Firth were the longest-serving women in the Yukon legislature, having both been elected from 1982 to 1996. Seven different First Nations women have sat in the Yukon Legislative Assembly (there have been twenty-three different women in total).6)
Margaret and Robert’s marriage ended in 1985, the same year she was appointed Minister of Health and Human Resources.7) The Women’s Directorate became a government department that year, reporting to Margaret Joe, Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, and responsible for ensuring that women’s concerns are integrated in government policies. Margaret Joe established the Yukon Advisory Council on Women’s Issues in February 1987. The Council provides an opportunity for women rural and urban, First Nation and settler, to provide advice to the minister on issues of concern. Issues discussed in the first years include family violence, services for rural pregnant women, social assistance rates and regulations regarding single parents, access to mammography services, and apprenticeship training.8)
Margaret Commodore remained a New Democratic Cabinet Minister until 1992.9)