Parties ignore Indigenous voters at their peril

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/09/2023 (766 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the 1999 Manitoba election, approximately 17,000 votes made the difference in the outcome of 16 seats, carrying Gary Doer’s NDP to a majority government over Gary Filmon’s Progressive Conservative party.

Filmon, whose austerity agenda had made deep cuts to health care, the civil service (remember “Filmon Fridays”?), and social services (leading to a spike in child welfare removals, poverty, addictions and crime) had become so unpopular his party lost over a dozen ridings by razor-thin margins.

Many have drawn parallels between 1999 and next month’s election for this reason alone.

What’s often forgotten is that the 1999 election was characterized by an election scandal involving Indigenous voting in the 1995 provincial election.

In that election, an unregistered northern party called the “Independent Native Voice” ran three First Nations candidates in Swan River, Dauphin and Interlake — coincidentally, all seats where the NDP had a small lead over the Conservatives.

Months before the 1999 vote, three Conservatives, including Filmon’s chief of staff, were found by an inquiry to have broken election laws by propping up the phony party that was intended to split the vote and allow Tories to win.

Their approach wasn’t to garner votes by making the Tory party more appealing to Indigenous voters but to try to ignore them altogether.

Doer won anyway — but these elections marked really the first time in Manitoba the Indigenous vote mattered.

In the Oct. 3 election — which appears to be as tight as that 1995 campaign — the Indigenous vote will matter again.

I’ve written many times during elections that in handfuls of ridings in Canada, Indigenous voters make the difference between winning and losing. This is no more true than in Manitoba, where 18 per cent of the province’s population is Indigenous (approximately 237,000 people). Approximately 102,000 live in Winnipeg — or 12.5 per cent.

A basic formula I use is that from Winnipeg northward, every 100 kilometres the proportion of Indigenous peoples goes up around a half a per cent.

In other words, the people behind the 1995 vote-rigging scandal knew what they were doing.

This wouldn’t work today, though. Just saying the Indigenous vote matters isn’t newsworthy anymore. Nor is trying to win Indigenous votes just in Manitoba’s north.

This election will be defined in many ways by the Indigenous electorate but also by a group that’s very specific: the Indigenous first-time voter.

According to the 2021 census, almost 20 per cent of all Indigenous peoples in Canada are between the ages of 15 to 24. In Manitoba, this percentage is slightly higher, at 25 per cent.

This means for approximately 20,000 Indigenous young people, this is their first chance to vote in a provincial election.

That’s what you call an electoral game changer.

For most of these youth, education matters. According to that same 2021 census, and for the first time in history, the vast majority of Indigenous young people (70 per cent) have diplomas.

They also deeply care about social services. Indigenous youth have children in their early 20s three times more than Canadian young people.

I’m sure I don’t have to convince anyone who knows about food security and poverty that Indigenous young people also spend a lot of time in the health care system, with Indigenous women reporting more chronic health conditions and mental health struggles than men.

Education, social services, and health are what provincial elections are run on.

This all goes to say that it’s not only the Indigenous vote that will matter this election, but the ways parties can engage the Indigenous first-time voter.

And, perhaps also more than ever, the urban first-time Indigenous voter.

The vast majority of Indigenous young people live, work, or at least spend time shopping, going to school, or living temporarily in Winnipeg.

Living conditions, housing, and other provincial services matter, of course, to northern communities but are often federal responsibilities.

What happens in towns, cities, and other areas of this province — where most Indigenous youth reside — are provincial responsibilities.

These are also places — particularly when it comes to hospitals, emergency rooms, the child welfare system, housing, and the justice system — where Indigenous youth also make up the majority.

If parties neglect this portion of the electorate, they do so at their own peril.

Appealing to Indigenous young voters can’t be done by a nuanced, quiet approach though.

The 2021 census also reported an interesting fact: an overwhelming amount of Indigenous youth (91 per cent of First Nations, 93 per cent of Métis and 97 per cent of Inuit youth) report feeling proud of their identity.

A proud Indigenous electorate is interested in a culturally competent, sensitive, and (at the very least) inclusive message for Manitobans.

So, who will step up to motivate an electoral group never seen before who stand to influence a province in ways never seen before?

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

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