Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew speaks at a premier and cabinet swearing-in ceremony in Winnipeg, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo by: John Woods / Canadian PressListen to article

Canada’s National Observer: A year ago today, Wab Kinew was sworn in as the first First Nations premier in Canada. Kinew was a star in Indigenous circles and ran on a renewed relationship with Indigenous Peoples. 

First Nations voters saw themselves, and infinite possibilities, in him. 

Now, three provincial elections loom on the horizon, with British Columbia and New Brunswick heading to the polls this weekend. Saskatchewan will be close behind on Oct. 28. It’s unclear if the Indigenous voters in the provinces will vote for progressive candidates and follow in the footsteps of Manitoba’s Wab effect. 

In the case of Kinew’s historic run for premier, “people saw that as being part of history,”  Chadwick Cowie, a University of Toronto professor who studies Indigenous participation in electoral politics, said. 

But there are many ways Indigenous voters can and do — or do not — get engaged in politics. 

For Cowie, Indigenous voters are especially motivated to head to the polls when they believe there is “someone who can work with them and is willing to work with them.”

When they do, it often means the candidate is Indigenous themselves. They see and understand when a candidate can advocate for Indigenous Peoples in the colonial, parliamentary arena. 

However, it also helped that the Conservative government ran a negative, even racist, campaign against Indigenous demands, including billboards against the search of Winnipeg’s dump for the bodies of those lost to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis.

For Cowie, Manitoba was an anomaly. Historically, in other provinces, negative politics against Indigenous priorities is often more the rule than the exception. 

Indigenous Peoples as a wedge issue 

Back in 2011, the Saskatchewan NDP government ran on a platform of national revenue-sharing with Indigenous communities. It backfired among non-Indigenous Saskatchewan voters, Cowie said, and led to a loss of seats for the NDP, which backpedalled and never promised the policy again.   

The defeated policy also surfaced an underbelly of racism among non-Indigenous people in the province, Cowie noted.

The policy revolt in Saskatchewan also suggests that advances in Indigenous self-determination and nationhood, economically and socially, can be a wedge issue for non-Indigenous voters. 

Indigenous rights have taken a major role in the B.C. election, as well. Canada’s National Observer has written about First Nation opposition to Conservative B.C. premier candidate John Rustad’s plan to scrap the province’s enshrinement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in a provincial law, known as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).

On Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which honours and commemorates survivors of the brutal, genocidal school system, Rustad proposed trashing DRIPA in favour of “economic reconciliation” policies. 

Rustad dismissed the implementation of DRIPA (which he voted in favour of) as an “assault on private property,” mostly owned by non-Indigenous British Columbians. 

“Our policies will emphasize fostering partnerships between First Nations and the private sector, with a strong focus on key sectors including natural resource management, fisheries, forestry, and clean energy,” a statement from Rustad’s party said at the time.

B.C. Assembly of First Nations Chief Terry Teegee told Canada’s National Observer that Rustad was leveraging First Nations as a wedge issue. It was a dehumanizing move that incites First Nations as a “bogeyman,” similar to Republican attacks on immigrants in the United States. 

The tactic was successful, in a way. The NDP paused proposed amendments on the Land Acts in light of DRIPA until after the election. It’s unclear if the attacks will give the NDP pause if they win.   

To vote or not to vote 

It’s important to recognize Indigenous Peoples are not a monolith in politics, Cowie said.

Some may vote; others don’t see the point. Some make their selection along partisan lines; some may jump parties each election. And when it comes to Indigenous candidates, there are those that run as conservatives and others as progressives, Cowie said. 

And for some Indigenous people, a certain cynicism sits unsettled in their political consciousness when deciding to vote.  

It’s a cynicism that columnist and academic Niigaan Sinclair voiced in the First Nation news site Windspeaker ahead of the last federal election.

“The issue is, do you vote for your own oppression? Because Canada is a state that is invested and continues to be invested in the oppression of Indigenous peoples, the suppression of Indigenous rights and the denial of those rights in every aspect of the country,” Sinclair told Windspeaker in 2021. 

According to a Yellowhead Institute brief ahead of the previous federal election, some First Nations people eschew electoral politics, as “voting would validate settler colonialism.” The argument is that electoral politics is an act of assimilation that sidesteps the advance and progress towards self-government and sovereignty. It would be seen as running contrary to the Canadian political system for mainstream political parties to facilitate that project; instead they often oppose it. 

“We continue to have a country in which Indigenous peoples are seen as second tier, are seen as lesser than, are deemed as not as important or an option for political parties to decide to deal with at some point. In that environment, the fact is that it is very difficult to justify voting because if all the parties suck, why would you participate in any of it?” Sinclair asks. 

— with files from Rochelle Baker  

Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative 

Matteo Cimellaro, Journalist