Indigenous conservatism, reconciliation & racist white liberals (ft. Jennifer Elle)
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Summary
Jennifer L. Lawitz is a well-known Canadian, Indigenous political strategist, columnist, and social media personality. She is here at the Canada Strong and Free Conference, where she will be speaking on a panel with other Conservatives. In this episode, Jennifer shares her story of how she became a political strategist and how she got her start in the political world. She also shares her thoughts on Indigenous policy and how the Trudeau government has dealt with Indigenous issues.
Transcript
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I'm sitting right now with Jennifer L. Lawitz. You may know her from Twitter. She is a well-known
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Canadian, Indigenous, political strategist, columnist, and social media personality.
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And she is here at the Canada Strong and Free Conference. She will be speaking on a panel,
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and she is here also with all these other Conservatives that are attending this
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great event. Jennifer, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
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I guess let's maybe start off with talking a bit about you. Tell me a bit about your journey and
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That's always an interesting question. So I first got into university to take my Bachelor of Education.
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I want to be a teacher and got to my fourth year and was like, this is not for me. What do I do?
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I need to figure something else out. Took one political science elective and was sold. And
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there were people in my class that were like, you are absolutely crazy to, because I had ended up
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going into a political science degree. And everyone was like, wow, good luck with that.
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And convocated university, got a job with a Conservative MP, MP Randy Hoback from Saskatchewan.
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For sure. I mean, as someone who takes political science classes, I can tell you, it is quite fun.
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It is quite thrilling. Maybe except when you're dealing with those crazy, crazy woke professors.
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Let's talk a bit about indigenous policy, because that's kind of your expertise.
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When Trudeau ran for prime minister in 2015, there was a lot of hope that he would be a changemaker on
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this file. And a lot of indigenous peoples that felt kind of neglected by the federal government
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over the years. And he had talked a big deal about reconciliation and really being different.
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It's been eight years now. And some of his critics say that he has failed indigenous communities,
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that he's not taking the right approaches to help these communities.
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What are your thoughts on how the Trudeau government has handled the indigenous file?
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I think prior to 2015, talking about indigenous policy and priorities was just that, not a priority.
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So when Justin Trudeau came in, he promised big things, a lot of reconciliation, a lot of talking
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points. And, you know, we saw the bureaucracy balloon in 2017 with the splitting of the two
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departments. But what we're seeing on the ground isn't actually translating from what we're seeing
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in Ottawa. So we're hearing a lot of conversation. We're hearing a lot of talking, photo ops,
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the whole thing. But the situation on the ground, you know, with the addictions and mental health
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and the homelessness, I see that epidemic hitting my people harder than I ever have in my entire
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life. So what is not correlating? And it just seems like any time you try to push back on
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For sure. I mean, of course, there's a lot of these issues that we talk about in a broader
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context, but that do impact indigenous communities, the drug issue, the housing issue. There's a lot
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of people here that are pushing for safer supply. I've spoken to indigenous chiefs that say that
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their reserve have a serious drug problem and they don't want safer supply. Is that a position
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that you share that just giving people drugs, especially without, you know, treatment or other
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Obviously, I can't speak for my community or anyone other than myself and my own experience.
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You know, I grew up kind of close to understanding addictions. I had a sibling that passed away from
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one in 2018. And what I can say is that expanding the access to substances while not increasing the
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access to the treatment options is a problem. And it's not just treatment like, you know, getting
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into treatment and detox. It's also the preventative factors such as like mental health and those type
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of resources. So that does worry me that we're so focused on increasing access to a substance,
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but not increasing access elsewhere where it's needed.
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In the discourse of reconciliation, there are kind of, you know, there's different visions of what
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that looks like. And there's, of course, people that say it's about more cooperation, moving forward
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and working together. But you also have some people, and especially in academia, and they talk a lot
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about decolonization. And by that, they want, you know, tearing down statues, and they want to rename
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streets. And a lot of the people who advocate for that are not actually even indigenous.
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Do you think that decolonization should have a role in the reconciliation process?
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It's tough to say, to me, reconciliation means so many things to so many different people. You
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know, Jody Wilson-Raybould wrote a book on reconciliation and does speeches on it because
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it's such a big word. But a lot of people are like, what does that actually mean? But to me,
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personally, reconciliation means, you know, including us in spaces exactly like this, bringing
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us on our panels and not just cherry picking important voices that you think are, you know,
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important or parrot back some of the talking points that you want to hear, but having those
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tough conversations and moving forward together. I don't think that, you know, tearing down statues
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is going to move anyone forward. I think it's just going to create issues and the burning of
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the churches and the entire thing. I think we all need to move forward together, but also understand
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our historical grievances with this country and understanding also that time does not erase
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There are several members of different minority communities who share frustration with the
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media because they'll say the media will only platform kind of our so-called elites who have
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a certain ideological viewpoints. And we say that in the U.S. with black conservatives are shielded
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from the mainstream media, same with gay conservatives. And do you think this is an issue here in
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Canada with the legacy media in general that they will not platform kind of indigenous voices
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that don't have kind of a narrative that is favored by the left?
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Absolutely. And it happens, you know, with every political party. No political party is immune
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from this. But what I can say is the Conservative Party seems to move a little bit more into that
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like self-determination role where, you know, they respect that. I don't see a lot of conservatives
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pushing back on indigenous voices that want to exist where they are politically. But right now,
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since we do have that liberal government, their supporters are relentless. It's like,
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if you're not voting for Justin Trudeau, you're a sellout to your community, you're a sellout
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to your identity. And that's a real problem because we're trying to move away from that
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paternalistic mindset. And it seems like we're going backwards with it.
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You kind of touched on something I was going to ask you about. And of course, being in the
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online space, there's a lot of benefits. But I guess one non-benefit is dealing with trolls,
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dealing with haters. And, you know, what I've noticed with you, and you told me this off
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cameras, there's a lot of, you know, woke white liberals that don't like what you have
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to say. Why do you think there are so many of these progressives, more self-described,
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and maybe anti-racists that get so triggered by the thought of somebody like yourself being
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a free thinker and not just towing a specific agenda? Why wouldn't they want to champion someone
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like you? Because you seem like if I was progressive, I would want to champion diversity.
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And this is a great example of diversity when you have different Indigenous peoples that have
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Yeah. I think there's a superior complex that comes into that, where that mindset comes in,
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where they're like, oh, I put ally in my bio and some nice emojis, and I really feel good about
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myself. But doing that work of reconciliation and understanding different viewpoints and not
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every Indigenous person is the same is tough work for some of them. And it honestly, they tell on
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themselves when they act like that. And for me, it's just pushing back where necessary,
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but also not being a hypocrite. Like for me to go out into the world and say, you know what,
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I promote self-determination, I respect self-determination means that if I see a fellow
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Indigenous person that's voting NDP or Liberal or doesn't even want to vote because they respect
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sovereignty, I'm not in any position to tell them they're wrong for that. So it's always about
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making sure that I'm being consistent with the way that I view it as well.
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It's such a basic principle, treat others how you want to be treated.
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How can Pierre Pellievre and the Conservatives, if they were to win the next election,
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do things differently to the benefit of Indigenous communities across Canada?
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I think rather than, you know, having that same government, we know best attitude,
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having the conversations where necessary. Obviously, government is always going to be
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not set up to fail, but it's going to be tough because how do you decide which communities should
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be the ones that you consult with or tell you what is best? But if there's energy products,
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duty to consult policy is huge. Political parties don't currently have that. But it just seems right
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now where the Liberals are like, if I balloon the bureaucracy and make it even bigger, we should see
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the results and they should be happy because we're spending all of this money. But I think if we give
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that power back to the nations, you know, the guaranteed loan program, get those resource projects
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moving if that's what communities want to do, you know, give them the funding for addictions and mental
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health and that sort of thing. And then, yeah, put the responsibility also back on the nations to
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manage their own affairs, essentially, but not just that. Respecting them and the way that they do it,
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but giving them the tools necessary to do it and not setting them up for failure either.
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No, I think that's a good point. Less bureaucracy, more freedom. And honestly,
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I think that's what a lot of, at least the one of the Indigenous people I spoke to want,
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is they want to be able to live their lives and they should be able to live their lives.
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Jennifer, is there anything else that you wanted to say?