Vote-buying remains all too common on reserves

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/01/2010 (5908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An old friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time called me the other day. Lately, my main means of keeping up with friends has been Facebook, so it was real nice to hear her voice.

The call was long-distance since she’s moved out of province both for work and family. I haven’t seen her in years, so we chatted for over an hour. I updated her on my life and found out her teen is getting big, like mine. She’s been living on reserve for a few years with her husband, and a new baby.

And despite her petite height, my old buddy is larger than life — outgoing, brash and bold — even on the phone. Eventually our catching up turned to recent happenings on her husband’s rez. Was she still living in the same little house they first moved into? Yep.

Was she still on a waiting list for housing? Yes, again. Same old, same old.

Then her voice took on a witty I’ve-got-a-secret kind of edge. I could hear her smile as she started to tell me about the election heating up on the rez.

She’d been keeping her eye on the current chief at a recent community event where he was unofficially doing some “campaigning” on the sidelines. It seems he was handing out money to a few people there, with the understanding that they’d support him with a vote in the next election.

Her husband — ever the joker — told her to go over and ask the chief if he could “help her out.”

Ever the comedian herself, she sashayed over and took him aside.

“No! You didn’t,” I said, laughing.

“Wait, it gets better,” she said, giggling.

She basically told him she’d recently been hit with some extra bills, and to her surprise he pulled out his wallet. Then he gave her $50, saying he’d give her another $50 later on.

We were basically laughing so hard at that point that I had tears running down my cheeks. Only she’d think of something like that.

The real joke is she isn’t a band member of that reserve, so she didn’t have a ballot to vote in the band election anyway. The money the chief gave her to gain her vote was for nothing.

Sure, it was funny, and only my friend would think of doing something like that. But wasn’t so funny. We both agreed on that. She told me one council candidate was rumoured to be offering $500 to each family that voted for him.

Vote-buying is really no laughing matter. I thought about our conversation for a while afterwards. Vote buying is wrong and it points to a bigger problem. My fear is some people might not even know vote-buying is wrong.

Sure, vote-buying doesn’t happen on every reserve, but it seems like it might be happening on a few.

Just last month, Charles Meechance, the former chief of Red Pheasant First Nation in Saskatchewan, was convicted of vote-buying in his reserve’s 2005 election. Meechance came up with a plan to buy off-reserve votes, which won him the election. The scam included vote-buying for a number of other council candidates as well.

Meechance’s conviction was the first ever criminal conviction for vote-buying on a First Nation in the Prairies, and it cost him eight months in jail.

And who’s going to complain about vote-buying? The people who get paid likely live in some pretty poor conditions. Extra money is tempting when you’re living hand to mouth.

And yes, vote-buying rumours float around in Manitoba, too. But is it all rumour? Louis Stevenson’s election at Peguis a few years ago was set aside by the federal courts after Indian Affairs officials let it slide.

The only sure thing is we’ve got to educate our people and crack down on the practice. Only then can honest leadership grow on each and every reserve out there.

colleen.simard@gmail.com