"Roberta Jamieson, Ontario's Ombudsman Ready for Challenge"

OHSWEKEN - As Roberta Jamieson sits at a picnic table outside her cedar home on the Six Nations reserve she takes a drink of her coffee and begins to tell a bit about the woman who would be ombudsman.

Her daughter, Jessica, 11, hovers in the background, crunching thoughtfully through the fallen leaves or peering down from the top of an oak tree.

Ms. Jamieson's silver earrings, designed by a local native artist, shimmer in the morning sun as she sets her coffee down, and like a true mediator _ sets out the terms of discussion decisively.

"I am not a native rights advocate and I don't see myself as that and I certainly wasn't asked to do that in my previous job. My previous job was to be independent and to be a mediator and that's where my talents lie," said Ms Jamieson.

"If I though for one minute that this was a token appointment I wouldn't give it a second thought."

"I'm a Mohawk and I'm proud of that but there's much more to me than that. I'm also a woman, I know what it's like to be a student, I know what it's like to live in rural Ontario and I know what it's like to be a mother."

Other things that come up in discussion reveal a woman that finds it hard to think in terms of obstacles or weaknesses and is determined to keep on top of everything despite a job that forced her to commute from the reserve into Toronto every day for 11 years and to juggle appointments with an answering machine that broke down last weekend because of message overload.

"It recorded 43 messages and then it just died on us," she laughed.

Behind the confident person who had originally planned to be a doctor and studied sciences during her first year at McGill University in 1970, is a person with a foible for cheeseburgers and french fries, especially "fries from the chip truck'; a lover of theatre who has seen Les Miserables twice; and mother to a daughter who has seen Les Miz once and knows every word to the production.

"It's great, she mows the lawn and sings to the Les Miz tape," said Ms. Jamieson.

But her love of the arts, a passion shared by her husband Tom Hill, artist and museum director of the Woodland Cultural Centre (he saw Les Miserables three times) is not relegated solely to the finer of arts and all pretention falls by the wayside when she speaks of her favourite television sitcom star.

"I love Roseanne she's so basic, she's like real life," laughs Ms. Jamieson.

She also enjoys camping, except when it rains, and is often accused of "cooking for the troops," a habit she says comes from growing up in a family that owned a restaurant on the reserve called Bobby's Grill.

But a pile of books next to her bed is a tangible testament to her favourite pasttime.