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‘A Very Hostile System in Which to Live’: Aboriginal Electoral Participation in Winnipeg’s Inner City By Jim Silver, Cyril Keeper and Michael MacKenzie May 2005 ISBN: 0-88627-430-3 Acknowledgements: We are happy to acknowledge the gener- Ed Keeper did a superb job of interview- ous financial support of the Social Sciences ing a group of seven young Aboriginal and Humanities Research Council, grant people whom we would not have been #538-2002-1003, via the Manitoba Re- able to interview without his involvement, search Alliance on Community Economic and we are very pleased to acknowledge Development in the New Economy. his important contribution to this project. We particularly wish to express our For various other important contributions gratitude to all those people who agreed to the project we are grateful to: Josie Hill to be interviewed for this project. Their and John Lussier of the Ma Mawi Wi Chi willingness to share with us their knowl- Itata Centre, our community partners in edge of urban Aboriginal life, and in this project; the Spence Neighbourhood particular their knowledge of urban Association; Joan Grace, Darren Lezubski, Aboriginal voting practices, has made John Loxley, Shauna MacKinnon and this project possible. Todd Scarth; and two anonymous review- ers of the paper. About the authors: Jim Silver is Professor of Politics at the Winnipeg City Councillor and Member of University of Winnipeg, and a member of Parliament for the area. the Board of Directors of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba. Michael Mackenzie is a recent graduate of the University of Winnipeg Department Cyril Keeper lives in Winnipeg’s inner city of Politics, and is currently a graduate stu- Spence neighbourhood, and is a former dent at McGill University. Table of Contents iii Executive Summary 1 Preface 2 Part One: Aboriginal Population by Electoral District in Manitoba and Winnipeg 9 Part Two: Why Should Aboriginal People Vote in Mainstream Elections? 11 Part Three: Aboriginal People and the Vote: The Literature 19 Part Four: The Results of Our Interviews 35 Conclusion 37 References Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives i ii Aboriginal Electoral Participation in Winnipeg‘s Inner City ABORIGINAL ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION IN WINNIPEG’S INNER CITY Executive Summary Aboriginal people are, on average, less strong sense of social exclusion—they feel likely than non-Aboriginal people to outside of, and not a part of or even wel- vote in mainstream—i.e. federal, provin- come in, the dominant culture and insti- cial and municipal—elections, although tutions of Canadian society. Many Abo- voter turnout on rural reserves is often riginal people do not vote in mainstream high. In this paper we try to determine elections for this reason. Third, the socio- whether Aboriginal people in Winni- economic and demographic characteris- peg’s inner city vote in mainstream elec- tics of Aboriginal people are, on average, tions, and if not, why not. consistent with those of non-voters gen- erally. And fourth, there is evidence that We argue that this is an important ques- the concepts of ‘political opportunity’ and tion because, particularly in cities like ‘political effort’ are important in explain- Winnipeg, the Aboriginal population is ing the relatively low levels of Aboriginal large and is growing. We provide evi- political participation—political parties dence to show that Aboriginal people are not generally open to Aboriginal peo- constitute a very significant proportion ples’ involvement, the literature argues, of the population in particular federal, and parties and politicians do not make provincial and City of Winnipeg elec- much effort to involve Aboriginal people. toral districts, and thus have potential These factors also appear to contribute to electoral strength. relatively low Aboriginal rates of voting in mainstream elections. A review of the relatively small body of existing literature about Aboriginal peo- We interviewed Aboriginal people in Win- ple and their voting practices suggests to nipeg, and particularly in Winnipeg’s in- us that there are four broad categories of ner city, to determine whether they vote explanations for the relatively low voter in mainstream elections, and if not why turnout among Aboriginal people in main- not. A total of 40 Aboriginal people were stream elections. All four are rooted in interviewed by two Aboriginal interview- Aboriginal peoples’ historical experience ers, from November 2003 to April 2004. of deliberate exclusion from the main- Although not a random sample, those in- stream of Canadian society as the conse- terviewed include roughly equal numbers quence of the process of colonization. One of women and men, and a cross-section explanation is the ‘nationalist’ explana- of ages, educational backgrounds and tion: some Aboriginal people choose not Aboriginal identities. to vote because they see themselves as part of distinctive nations, and seek na- What we found in our interviews is not tion-to-nation relations with Canada, and completely consistent with the literature. to vote in Canada would undermine the The nationalist explanation, for example, logic of their position, although they may appears not to be a factor in explaining still vote in band elections. Second, their urban Aboriginal non-voting in main- historical and current experience is such stream elections, and in fact some re- that many Aboriginal people, including spondents argued the opposite case: that many urban Aboriginal people, feel a in order to protect their Aboriginal rights, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives iii urban Aboriginal people ought to vote in were to be approached by politicians and mainstream elections. political parties, and treated with respect, The social exclusion explanation, by con- if they were to be treated as equals, they trast, was confirmed by our interviews. A would become involved. Yet far from ac- majority of our respondents said that the tively inviting Aboriginal people into the reason so many Aboriginal people do not political process in this way, most politi- vote is that they feel outside of the sys- cians and political parties, our respond- tem, they feel excluded or marginalized ents repeatedly told us, do not even come from the system, and from the main- into Aboriginal neighbourhoods to meet stream electoral system in particular, and with Aboriginal people. therefore do not vote in that system. Finally, the results of our interviews lead The observation that voting is correlated us to think that the voting practices of with age and level of formal education— Aboriginal people in Winnipeg could soon the third of the four broad explanatory change. There is a strong, positive corre- streams that we identified in the litera- lation among our interview respondents ture—was also borne out in our study. For between level of formal education, and example, a large majority of the interview- likelihood of voting, and the numbers of ees who told us that they always vote were Aboriginal people attending post-second- 35 years of age or older and had at least ary educational institutions are growing. some post-secondary education. Perhaps more importantly, many of our respondents made it very clear to us that We found that many more urban Aborigi- if they were approached by political par- nal people would vote if political parties ties and asked to vote, they would be likely and candidates for office were to make an to do so, and if Aboriginal candidates were effort to reach out to them. This was the to be running for office, they would be fourth broad explanatory theme that we even more likely to do so. Given the sig- identified in the literature, and it too was nificance of their numbers in so many borne out in our interviews. A majority of electoral districts, it seems to us to be respondents told us that politicians and likely—if for no other reason than self-in- parties need to connect with Aboriginal terest—that political parties and politi- people, and need to come into Aboriginal cians will start to court the Aboriginal neighbourhoods and meet and talk with vote, and that more Aboriginal candidates Aboriginal people in a face-to-face man- will be sought and will emerge in particu- ner. Aboriginal people feel socially ex- lar electoral districts. cluded in urban centres, they feel marginalized from mainstream non-Abo- Whether this will benefit urban Aborigi- riginal institutions, and because of their nal people, and particularly the relatively history of colonization, many are reluctant high proportion of urban Aboriginal peo- to become involved. But our respondents ple who live in disadvantaged circum- told us that if urban Aboriginal people stances, remains to be seen. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives iv ‘A VERY HOSTILE SYSTEM IN WHICH TO LIVE’: ABORIGINAL POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN WINNIPEG’S INNER CITY By Jim Silver, Cyril Keeper and Michael MacKenzie What little evidence there is suggests that, people in Manitoba and in Winnipeg con- on average, Aboriginal people are less stitute a significant proportion of poten- likely to participate in the mainstream tial voters, and we examine existing data electoral process—and in particular less on the propensity of Aboriginal people to likely to vote in federal, provincial and vote in mainstream elections. municipal elections—than non-Aboriginal In Part Two we consider the question, people. At the same time, there is evidence ‘why should Aboriginal people vote in that voter turnout rates in many First Na- mainstream elections?’ tions band elections is relatively high (See, for example, Bedford and Pobihushchy, In Part Three we examine the existing lit- 1995; Guerin, 2003). erature on Aboriginal political participa- tion in an attempt to find explanations for In this paper we examine this issue—the Aboriginal peoples’ relatively low rates of relatively low propensity of Aboriginal voter turnout in Canadian federal, provin- people to vote in mainstream elections— cial and municipal elections.

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