Macleans: How young Indigenous politicians are leading Manitoba’s NDP
After an internal collapse in faith in Selinger, when he broke a promise and raised the PST, several NDP veterans chose not to run again, opening up inner-city seats for Kinew and Fontaine. That coincided with the arrival of the “third real wave” since Indigenous people were first allowed to go to university in the 1960s, says Niigaan Sinclair, the Native studies department head of the University of Manitoba. In the first wave, Aboriginal leaders became lawyers, like Phil Fontaine and Murray Sinclair, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and now a senator (and the academic’s father). In the 1980s, people became doctors and teachers. “Now we have people who are entering all sectors, public and private sectors of Canada,” Niigaan Sinclair says. “It’s just the time.”