Simonie Michael (Inuktitut: ᓴᐃᒨᓂ ᒪᐃᑯᓪ;[2]: 497  first name also spelled Simonee,[3] alternative surnames Michel[2]: 455  or E7-551;[4] March 2, 1933 – November 15, 2008) was a Canadian politician from the eastern Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) who was the first Inuk elected to a legislature in Canada.

After becoming the first elected Inuk member of the Northwest Territories Legislative Council, in 1966, Michael worked on infrastructural and public health initiatives.

He would later say that the American military did not provide compensation for much of the labour that Inuit workers performed, including three months of work transporting wood.

[6]: ch.10 Before his election to the Northwest Territories Legislative Council at the age of 33, Michael worked as a carpenter,[12]: 116–117  and ran a taxi and bus service.

[15] Before Michael's candidacy for territory-wide office, Ronald Duffy writes that he already "had been named to just about every Iqaluit council and board in which Inuit [had] a voice".

[17]: 65  The creation of several new districts, increasing the legislative body up to 13 members,[4] had left three openings for one-year terms to the council without any incumbents.

[12]: 116–117  In this inaugural speech, he argued that discriminatory practices remained common in the Northwest Territories, despite the council having passed legislation outlawing discrimination.

In the 1940s, the Government of Canada had decided that it was unable to track Inuit using their traditional names, and it assigned numbers to each individual Inuk using a type of dog tag system.

[23] Although this issue had been raised previously by Abe Okpik in the Legislative Assembly and was becoming increasingly salient,[24] Michael is widely credited with attracting the attention of the press and prompting the government to pass a motion authorizing Project Surname, in which Okpik spent the years between 1968 and 1971 travelling throughout the Northwest Territories and recording each Inuk's preferred surname to replace their disc numbers.

The town there was home to 210 people, but was built on top of a layer of muskeg that covered permafrost, which made building a major challenge and water drainage a perennial concern.

[2]: 455  These efforts, and those of the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, prompted the federal government to study the situation and ultimately provide materials for emergency housing.

[29] Given this context, Eva Aariak, the Premier of Nunavut, described Michael's election as "an important step forward in the evolution of our territory and its democratic institutions.

"[10] Similarly, the academics Peter Kulchyski and Frank James Tester identify Michael as an important member of a "unique" generation of Inuit leaders "who seized their time to forge a new politics in the arctic", and whose leadership "deserves special recognition".