Any Indigenous candidate who’s elected needs to maintain the momentum of addressing historic harms done to Indigenous communities by policymakers, said Frank Deer, a professor in the faculty of education at the University of Manitoba.

“Many areas of public endeavour have allowed reconciliation to inform what they’ve done. We’ve continued to discover things about our past and our present.”

The Liberal party did not respond to requests asking for the number of its Indigenous candidates. The Canadian Press found 15.