Newly elected Long Plain chief vows to shake up the system

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This article was published 19/04/2022 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The young woman who is taking over the reins of Long Plain First Nation hopes to transform systems that have kept power out of the hands of Indigenous people, and inspire young women to take on leadership roles.

“We have all the answers within our communities and our families, and there shouldn’t be anyone outside of our community dictating how that looks,” said Chief Kyra Wilson, 35.

Band members elected the therapist and former social worker as chief last week, making her one of the few young women to lead a First Nation in Manitoba.

Her community, which borders Portage la Prairie, was led by Dennis Meeches for 26 years; he took office when Wilson was just nine years old.

On Meeches’ watch, Long Plain focused on economic growth by opening a reserve near Polo Park in 2013 that has a gas station and college, and a chain hotel on the edge of Portage la Prairie in 2019.

The community has helped lead the other six nations that make up Treaty 1 in developing the Kapyong Barracks land in Winnipeg.

Despite its business ventures, people in Long Plain live in overcrowded houses and often have to hitchhike to doctor’s appointments. The school ends at Grade 9, forcing students to take buses out of town.

Wilson says she hopes to use revenue to pay for better services, while pushing the federal government for more autonomy.

“It’s about funding but also advocacy, and lobbying for all these basic needs to be met,” she said.

The band has 4,760 registered members, of whom 2,500 live on reserve.

But not everyone is counted due to constraints in the Indian Act.

Wilson learned she couldn’t register her daughter as a Long Plain citizen, because of those rules. The social worker never intended to enter politics, despite her father Robert Doucette leading Métis Nation-Saskatchewan for a decade.

But she took up the mantle because she wanted to change colonial rules.

“No one has the right to say whether my daughter’s a band member or connected to the community. It should be coming from us as a nation. That’s what really kick-started me being involved in (politics).”

Wilson ran for office in the 2016 provincial election, placing third for the Liberals in Fort Richmond.

She went back to foster care, pushing for Indigenous autonomy and helping launch the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs’ family advocate office in 2015.

Wilson served on the board of the First Nations Caring Society, a group that successfully sued Ottawa for racial discrimination against First Nations children.

The case has resulted in better services for children and Indigenous laws governing foster care, a process Wilson said is encouraging but far too slow.

As the pandemic hit, Wilson transitioned into counselling, studying Indigenous knowledge and offering land-based therapy, which connects people with traditional healing alongside conventional mental-health treatments.

She ran for Long Plain chief after Meeches announced he planned to step down, and recommended she run for the job.

Wilson is Long Plain’s second female chief, with the last elected in 1973.

She noted that patriarchal, western systems were adopted by communities that often had women in leadership positions before colonization, a point stressed by the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

“We have more men sitting in seats of leadership, which is not a bad thing in some instances‚ but we should be including our women when it comes to being in these leadership positions,” she said.

Wilson said First Nations should have a wider range of people in leadership roles. Her band also elected a 22-year-old councillor last week.

“Times are changing, and it really is a beautiful thing that communities are wanting that change and that representation, whether it’s male, female or two-spirit,” Wilson said.

Meanwhile, the assembly is facing its own reckoning. Chiefs will vote next month on the future of suspended grand chief Arlen Dumas, who has been accused of sexual assault against a female colleague.

Wilson said she hasn’t decided how she’ll vote.

“Leadership are going to be making a decision and I just have faith in the process, that everybody will make the right decision, and I’m not sure what that decision is yet.”

She hopes her council will leverage its diversity to bring about even more progress in the community, and inspire young people in other communities to run for office.

“The election with Long Plain has inspired a lot of people, because when they see somebody that looks like them sitting in a leadership position, it gives them that hope.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca