Somewhere, Louis Riel is smiling. Métis candidate Brian Bowman won Winnipeg’s mayoral election on Oct. 22, Riel’s 170th birthday. This made Winnipeg the largest Canadian city to date to be governed by one of Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples.
Within 12 months, Canadians will go to the polls for a national election. Judging by past results, you’ll see relatively few aboriginal faces lined up at the ballot boxes. Even fewer aboriginal names will appear on the ballots. We asked Bowman and Wab Kinew — a First Nations journalist and director of indigenous inclusion at the University of Winnipeg — for their thoughts on engaging aboriginals in Canadian politics, as both voters and candidates.
Growing up, Bowman’s working-class family quietly celebrated their Métis heritage. Bowman remembers making bannock with hand-picked blueberries. “My grandparents wouldn’t let us have Sunday dinner until we did the Red River Jig,” he said.
Another cultural value strongly promoted in his family was community service. This led him, as a lawyer, to help victims of cyberbullying and ultimately throw his hat into the mayoral ring. “My parents instilled in me that I have a responsibility to contribute,” Bowman said.
Unfortunately, Bowman is a rare bird. As far as we know, no other provincial capital city (outside the Territories) has ever had an aboriginal mayor. Out of 308 seats in Canada’s federal Parliament, only seven are occupied by aboriginals.
The deficit in aboriginal participation is just as marked when it comes to voter turnout. Following the 2011 federal election, Elections Canada found that fewer than 45 per cent of eligible First Nations voters on reserves had cast a ballot, far below the national turnout rate of 61 per cent.
It is estimated that, had aboriginals voted at the same rate as non-aboriginals, they might have changed the results in as many as 14 ridings.
Kinew — a nationally influential figure on issues around aboriginal political engagement — identifies key issues contributing to the absence of aboriginal voices in politics.
The first is cynicism.
Voter turnout in many Canadian elections is falling because of a growing cynicism about hyper-partisan politics and a feeling that individuals are powerless to affect the system. Kinew says that feeling is magnified among aboriginals because of their long history of exclusion and abuse at the hands of governments.
And in general, Kinew notes, the most economically disadvantaged in society, which includes aboriginals, are always the least engaged in politics.
Kinew added that Canada’s political parties don’t go out of their way to seek the votes of aboriginal communities. “Politicians don’t court our vote because we don’t vote and we don’t vote because they don’t show any interest in us,” he said.
So what can we do to counter these challenges?
Kinew said Canada first needs to address the injustices and economic inequality faced by aboriginal communities to reduce the feelings of cynicism and exclusion.
Political parties and candidates need to reach out. Kinew notes that Canadian parties seem eager to recruit aboriginal candidates. However, he stressed, they must spend more time talking and listening to aboriginal communities, both in and out of election season.
Bowman said he made outreach a component of his election campaign. And although statistics aren’t available yet, Bowman and Kinew believe Winnipeg saw at least a modest increase in aboriginal voter turnout in its municipal election.
As non-aboriginal voters, we can do our part by voting for candidates and parties that clearly make an effort to engage aboriginal communities.
Bowman hopes his mayoral win will inspire other aboriginals, and he encourages everyone he meets — especially aboriginal youth — to run for office someday.
Louis Riel and fellow Métis Pierre Delorme were the first aboriginals elected in Canada. That was in the 1870s. There wouldn’t be another aboriginal citizen in our national Parliament until the 1968 election of Leonard Marchand in B.C. Status indigenous peoples didn’t get the right to vote until 1960.
It’s been a long road from Riel to Bowman.
If democracy is, as the Greeks defined it, rule by the people, Canada will not have a true democracy until all our people — aboriginal and non-aboriginal — participate equally.
Brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger founded a platform for social change that includes the international charity, Free The Children, the social enterprise, Me to We, and the youth empowerment movement, We Day.
