Candidate profile — Wastasecoot a voice for aboriginals

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This article was published 10/10/2015 (3961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Melissa Wastasecoot is proud to be one of the New Democratic Party’s 23 indigenous candidates in the 2015 federal election.

At first she was hesitant about putting her name forward, but Wastasecoot said she was compelled to run in Brandon-Souris so she could be a voice for the aboriginal community.

“It’s not about me really, it’s about our community and our people,” she said. “I don’t feel that the community’s been fairly represented here in terms of the diversity … As a First Nations woman, I feel that way, too.”

Wastasecoot has been involved with the provincial NDP through her job as constituency assistant for Brandon East MLA Drew Caldwell. The transition to federal politics has not been seamless.

“It’s a huge learning curve for me. It’s been difficult at times,” she said.

Wastasecoot said she is used to working one-on-one with people and more in the background, so to be in the spotlight as a candidate has taken some getting used to.

“The best thing for me is meeting people and being able to talk to them when I’m out canvassing,” she said. “And hearing what their concerns are.”

On this particular day, Wastasecoot, along with friend and volunteer Sary Innerst, handed out pamphlets and spoke with people along Rosser Avenue and in The Town Centre.

One of her main goals is to simply encourage people to get out and vote.

“In this election, every vote counts,” Innerst said to a group of people downtown. “This one’s important.”

Wastasecoot hopes to see more of the aboriginal population heading to the polls this year.

“Our issues have been overlooked for so long,” she said. “Over 500 years now of colonialism in this country, so a lot of our people don’t have any trust in our government — ever.”

The message she hopes to get across is that there is an opportunity for people to be involved and “try to make some of those positive changes from the inside out.”

With Wastasecoot’s approachable and down-to-earth nature, many people invite her to sit down and speak with them.

“For me, what’s important is the missing and murdered men and women,” said Robbie Longclaws, who was at a table in The Town Centre food court.

Longclaws was impressed that a federal candidate reached out to her, and was happy to hear information first-hand.

“It’s very interesting that they came and approached me. Usually we have to go out and look for them,” she said.

Wastasecoot was born in Brandon, but spent a majority of her time in Winnipeg. She moved back to attend Brandon University.

Now a single mother of two children, Wastasecoot is grateful for the NDP support during the campaign.

“We have a really low resource campaign right now, and if I wasn’t being supported by the party… to replace my wages, I would not be able to do this at all,” she said.

While out on the campaign trail, Wastasecoot hears many different concerns from voters, ranging from affordable housing to child care and seniors issues.

“People are just desperate to find child-care spaces, affordable child care,” she said. “That’s part of our platform, too … capping child care at $15 a day for your children.”

There is a lot of enthusiasm from her supporters and the people she meets along the campaign trail about the NDP and leader Tom Mulcair.

“We just need a change,” Innerst said. “(The NDP) have a large number of aboriginal candidates, so that’s a big bonus because there’s a lot of racism in Canada and I don’t think indigenous people get a lot of proper representation.”

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