Aaron McKay beocmes Riding Mountain NDP Council president

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This article was published 21/03/2024 (589 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

About five months after Manitoba elected it’s first First Nations premier, the Riding Mountain NDP Council members have named Aaron McKay of Rolling River First Nation their new president.

McKay brings to the role his experience and leadership in several community organizations that he plays an active role in, including serving as the director of the Clear Lake Country tourism group and on the Wasagaming Chamber of Commerce. McKay is the director of the Erickson Chamber of Commerce and the vice-chair of the Erickson Food Bank. He has also been working with tourism in Brandon and Winnipeg and is on the CBC Manitoba Community Advisory Board.

In addition to working as a student success advisor in Brandon at Assiniboine Community College, McKay owns and operates Giiwe Media, a multimedia, art and storytelling business that documents the beauty and richness of Indigenous stories.

“It’s very heartwarming to see how quickly I’ve been accepted by the communities I’m involved with,” McKay told the Sun.

In a post on social media on March 11, McKay announced his new position with the Riding Mountain NDP Council. the post stated that McKay plans to work with communities in the Riding Mountain Constituency and bring people together.

McKay said he has always had an interest in provincial politics, something that he inherited from his parents and grandparents.

“I can remember them talking about politics, and a lot of it really came from my dad,” he said. “He always had an interest in that side of things, too, and so I would listen to him, and of course my grandparents. I grew up listening to them as well.”

McKay remembers first being interested in the NDP party of Manitoba when Gary Doer was premier, 1999 to 2009.

It was around the early to mid 2000’s that McKay was tuning into the political landscape of Manitoba, and his interest in it was further sparked in later years.

“Back in 2016, when I graduated as a teacher, that’s when I really started getting into politics and listening. With me being a teacher, teachers were really affected by [budget] cuts,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t continue with being a teacher, just because the environment that I met just wasn’t friendly, and regardless of who was in power, I just felt like, ‘Why are these cuts being done to education, this doesn’t make any sense.’”

Further health-care cuts under the previous Progressive Conservative government and former premier Heather Stefanson solidified McKay’s desire to be a force of positive change in Manitoba’s political scene. He started paying closer attention to how the province was being run in 2017, and was disappointed with then-premier Brian Pallister’s comments about the province’s history.

As the Sun previously reported, in August of 2021, Pallister announced his decision to step down as premier. Earlier that month, he apologized for comments he made after two statues on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature were toppled by protesters over the deaths of Indigenous children who were forced to attend residential schools. At the time, Pallister said that the people who came to Canada did not come to destroy, but to build. Indigenous leaders reacted by criticizing him for his downplay of the harmful effects of residential schools.

When Wab Kinew was elected as Manitoba’s new premier on Oct. 30 of last year, McKay felt like a new era had come for the province’s political future. Finally, a premier was in place that McKay and many other Indigenous people could relate to, he said.

Despite a hardline Tory campaign to malign Kinew for his past run-ins with the law, the new premier rose above the criticism to take the reigns – something that McKay said he found extremely inspiring and relatable.

“When the parties were attacking him … it really made me question, do I even have a place? What about the next person beside me? Who can relate to that social history?” he said.

McKay said that Kinew’s success sent the message to other Indigenous people – and others who have overcome struggles in their past – that just because someone has gone through a period of time when they ]made poor decisions, it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to move forward in their lives.

“It makes me reflect on my grandparents, my parents and myself. It made me look at these kids who are coming up. We’ve all made bad decisions, and with Indigenous people, there’s an added layer to that,” McKay said. “People have been through a lot. We’ve survived a lot, and we’re doing our best to repair ourselves and to heal from that.”

The journey of healing and rising above factors like the continuing impacts of colonization and intergenerational trauma is not always going to be smooth sailing, said McKay, an intergenerational residential school survivor. To move forward, he encourages Indigenous people to look back in history to who they were before colonization, but also hopes that non-Indigenous people will look back on their own history too, so Manitobans and Canadians can move forward together. That includes, he added, acknowledging the true history of the land.

“Everything that Manitoba, that Canada, that North America has is build on Indigenous land, Indigenous history, Indigenous culture,” McKay said. “Without the people, without the land, we wouldn’t have anything we have today.”

It was last year when McKay decided to officially enter the vicinity of provincial politics by quietly becoming a member of Manitoba’s NDP. He didn’t tell anyone about it at the time, because he wanted then – and still wants now – for people to see him first and foremost as a human being, and not a member of one political party or another.

“I’m not someone who partakes in contemporary, divisive politics. I’m not someone who buys into ‘this is my party, my party is my party,’” McKay said. “I want people to look at me as Aaron McKay, the person, the human being who wants to work with you and help people.”

Not just in the world of politics but in the wider world in general, people have become out of touch with how to authentically communicate with one another, McKay said. It’s something he remedies in his own thinking by reminding himself that all people are related by their common thread of shared humanity.

“You need to show people that respect. If they don’t show me that respect, then fine, I’ll just go on about my business.”

McKay’s duties in his new role as president of the Riding Mountain NDP Council will include providing direction for the council executive, interpreting provincial legislation and policies, ensuring executive compliance, and co-ordinating with fellow members to develop and implement strategies to raise awareness of the council and to ensure its success.

He’ll also be responsible for helping to develop the council’s framework and strategic growth, and he’ll act as a party spokesperson.

“I want to get more community members involved in political activities or economic activities within the province and within the country,” McKay said. “I want to encourage my community members of Rolling River First Nation and other Indigenous people to get more involved and to see themselves as having a place here, because this is their home. Their voices should be heard and taken into consideration.”

Ultimately, McKay hopes his time as president of the Riding Mountain NDP Council will see him bring people together to share stories, listen to one another, and grow together. If he were to enter politics further in the future, he’d do it for the same reasons he stepped into his current role, he said.

“I’d be doing it for everybody. And I’d want to listen to a wide variety of voices. I’m not going to be able to make everyone happy, but I’d be acting in the best interests of the future generations.”

On whatever road his journey takes him, McKay remains committed to listening to his elders and the land. It’s a message that might not align with everyone, he said, but one that is impossible for him to deny.

“We all have that strength to succeed, but part of that is having to find out who you are as a person, and where you come from. What’s your language, what’s your culture? What’s your identity, and what is your home?” he said. “Once you find that, nobody can take that away from you, because you know who you are.”

McKay says he is looking forward to attending the NDP convention in Winnipeg on May 3-5.

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