Juno News - Indigenous conservatism, reconciliation & racist white liberals (ft. Jennifer Elle)

00:00:00.000 I'm sitting right now with Jennifer L. Lawitz. You may know her from Twitter. She is a well-known

00:00:07.020 Canadian, Indigenous, political strategist, columnist, and social media personality.

00:00:13.300 And she is here at the Canada Strong and Free Conference. She will be speaking on a panel,

00:00:18.420 and she is here also with all these other Conservatives that are attending this

00:00:22.340 great event. Jennifer, thank you so much for sitting down with me.

00:00:25.800 Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:00:26.700 I guess let's maybe start off with talking a bit about you. Tell me a bit about your journey and

00:00:32.180 how you made it to where you are today.

00:00:35.000 That's always an interesting question. So I first got into university to take my Bachelor of Education.

00:00:40.940 I want to be a teacher and got to my fourth year and was like, this is not for me. What do I do?

00:00:45.660 I need to figure something else out. Took one political science elective and was sold. And

00:00:51.780 there were people in my class that were like, you are absolutely crazy to, because I had ended up

00:00:56.320 going into a political science degree. And everyone was like, wow, good luck with that.

00:01:00.640 And convocated university, got a job with a Conservative MP, MP Randy Hoback from Saskatchewan.

00:01:06.240 And the rest is history from there.

00:01:08.480 For sure. I mean, as someone who takes political science classes, I can tell you, it is quite fun.

00:01:12.460 It is quite thrilling. Maybe except when you're dealing with those crazy, crazy woke professors. 0.88

00:01:16.860 Let's talk a bit about indigenous policy, because that's kind of your expertise.

00:01:21.780 When Trudeau ran for prime minister in 2015, there was a lot of hope that he would be a changemaker on

00:01:27.720 this file. And a lot of indigenous peoples that felt kind of neglected by the federal government

00:01:31.640 over the years. And he had talked a big deal about reconciliation and really being different.

00:01:36.980 It's been eight years now. And some of his critics say that he has failed indigenous communities,

00:01:41.600 that he's not taking the right approaches to help these communities.

00:01:45.340 What are your thoughts on how the Trudeau government has handled the indigenous file?

00:01:49.840 I think prior to 2015, talking about indigenous policy and priorities was just that, not a priority.

00:01:56.380 So when Justin Trudeau came in, he promised big things, a lot of reconciliation, a lot of talking

00:02:00.900 points. And, you know, we saw the bureaucracy balloon in 2017 with the splitting of the two

00:02:05.740 departments. But what we're seeing on the ground isn't actually translating from what we're seeing

00:02:10.440 in Ottawa. So we're hearing a lot of conversation. We're hearing a lot of talking, photo ops,

00:02:13.980 the whole thing. But the situation on the ground, you know, with the addictions and mental health

00:02:18.300 and the homelessness, I see that epidemic hitting my people harder than I ever have in my entire

00:02:23.360 life. So what is not correlating? And it just seems like any time you try to push back on

00:02:27.580 that, people don't understand it.

00:02:29.900 For sure. I mean, of course, there's a lot of these issues that we talk about in a broader

00:02:33.740 context, but that do impact indigenous communities, the drug issue, the housing issue. There's a lot

00:02:38.680 of people here that are pushing for safer supply. I've spoken to indigenous chiefs that say that

00:02:44.760 their reserve have a serious drug problem and they don't want safer supply. Is that a position

00:02:50.400 that you share that just giving people drugs, especially without, you know, treatment or other

00:02:55.500 options is not a good idea?

00:02:58.840 Obviously, I can't speak for my community or anyone other than myself and my own experience.

00:03:02.900 You know, I grew up kind of close to understanding addictions. I had a sibling that passed away from

00:03:07.560 one in 2018. And what I can say is that expanding the access to substances while not increasing the

00:03:14.960 access to the treatment options is a problem. And it's not just treatment like, you know, getting

00:03:20.360 into treatment and detox. It's also the preventative factors such as like mental health and those type

00:03:26.660 of resources. So that does worry me that we're so focused on increasing access to a substance,

00:03:31.840 but not increasing access elsewhere where it's needed.

00:03:34.180 In the discourse of reconciliation, there are kind of, you know, there's different visions of what

00:03:42.720 that looks like. And there's, of course, people that say it's about more cooperation, moving forward

00:03:48.060 and working together. But you also have some people, and especially in academia, and they talk a lot

00:03:51.920 about decolonization. And by that, they want, you know, tearing down statues, and they want to rename

00:03:58.620 streets. And a lot of the people who advocate for that are not actually even indigenous.

00:04:01.840 Right.

00:04:02.720 Do you think that decolonization should have a role in the reconciliation process?

00:04:09.060 It's tough to say, to me, reconciliation means so many things to so many different people. You

00:04:13.460 know, Jody Wilson-Raybould wrote a book on reconciliation and does speeches on it because

00:04:17.640 it's such a big word. But a lot of people are like, what does that actually mean? But to me,

00:04:22.560 personally, reconciliation means, you know, including us in spaces exactly like this, bringing

00:04:27.960 us on our panels and not just cherry picking important voices that you think are, you know,

00:04:33.140 important or parrot back some of the talking points that you want to hear, but having those

00:04:38.640 tough conversations and moving forward together. I don't think that, you know, tearing down statues

00:04:43.260 is going to move anyone forward. I think it's just going to create issues and the burning of

00:04:47.160 the churches and the entire thing. I think we all need to move forward together, but also understand

00:04:52.100 our historical grievances with this country and understanding also that time does not erase

00:04:58.180 that either.

00:04:59.280 There are several members of different minority communities who share frustration with the

00:05:04.140 media because they'll say the media will only platform kind of our so-called elites who have

00:05:09.140 a certain ideological viewpoints. And we say that in the U.S. with black conservatives are shielded 0.99

00:05:13.980 from the mainstream media, same with gay conservatives. And do you think this is an issue here in

00:05:18.420 Canada with the legacy media in general that they will not platform kind of indigenous voices

00:05:24.520 that don't have kind of a narrative that is favored by the left?

00:05:28.720 Absolutely. And it happens, you know, with every political party. No political party is immune

00:05:32.660 from this. But what I can say is the Conservative Party seems to move a little bit more into that

00:05:37.820 like self-determination role where, you know, they respect that. I don't see a lot of conservatives

00:05:42.940 pushing back on indigenous voices that want to exist where they are politically. But right now,

00:05:48.240 since we do have that liberal government, their supporters are relentless. It's like,

00:05:52.460 if you're not voting for Justin Trudeau, you're a sellout to your community, you're a sellout

00:05:56.060 to your identity. And that's a real problem because we're trying to move away from that

00:05:59.760 paternalistic mindset. And it seems like we're going backwards with it.

00:06:03.700 You kind of touched on something I was going to ask you about. And of course, being in the

00:06:07.680 online space, there's a lot of benefits. But I guess one non-benefit is dealing with trolls,

00:06:13.100 dealing with haters. And, you know, what I've noticed with you, and you told me this off

00:06:17.820 cameras, there's a lot of, you know, woke white liberals that don't like what you have

00:06:22.480 to say. Why do you think there are so many of these progressives, more self-described,

00:06:27.020 and maybe anti-racists that get so triggered by the thought of somebody like yourself being

00:06:31.760 a free thinker and not just towing a specific agenda? Why wouldn't they want to champion someone

00:06:37.780 like you? Because you seem like if I was progressive, I would want to champion diversity.

00:06:42.260 And this is a great example of diversity when you have different Indigenous peoples that have

00:06:46.300 very different views.

00:06:47.760 Yeah. I think there's a superior complex that comes into that, where that mindset comes in,

00:06:51.960 where they're like, oh, I put ally in my bio and some nice emojis, and I really feel good about

00:06:56.880 myself. But doing that work of reconciliation and understanding different viewpoints and not

00:07:01.400 every Indigenous person is the same is tough work for some of them. And it honestly, they tell on

00:07:06.360 themselves when they act like that. And for me, it's just pushing back where necessary,

00:07:11.620 but also not being a hypocrite. Like for me to go out into the world and say, you know what,

00:07:15.120 I promote self-determination, I respect self-determination means that if I see a fellow

00:07:19.320 Indigenous person that's voting NDP or Liberal or doesn't even want to vote because they respect

00:07:23.360 sovereignty, I'm not in any position to tell them they're wrong for that. So it's always about

00:07:27.600 making sure that I'm being consistent with the way that I view it as well.

00:07:31.280 It's such a basic principle, treat others how you want to be treated.

00:07:34.060 How can Pierre Pellievre and the Conservatives, if they were to win the next election,

00:07:39.340 do things differently to the benefit of Indigenous communities across Canada?

00:07:43.780 I think rather than, you know, having that same government, we know best attitude,

00:07:49.220 having the conversations where necessary. Obviously, government is always going to be

00:07:52.940 not set up to fail, but it's going to be tough because how do you decide which communities should

00:07:57.240 be the ones that you consult with or tell you what is best? But if there's energy products,

00:08:01.100 duty to consult policy is huge. Political parties don't currently have that. But it just seems right

00:08:05.840 now where the Liberals are like, if I balloon the bureaucracy and make it even bigger, we should see

00:08:09.920 the results and they should be happy because we're spending all of this money. But I think if we give

00:08:13.820 that power back to the nations, you know, the guaranteed loan program, get those resource projects

00:08:17.700 moving if that's what communities want to do, you know, give them the funding for addictions and mental

00:08:23.040 health and that sort of thing. And then, yeah, put the responsibility also back on the nations to

00:08:28.100 manage their own affairs, essentially, but not just that. Respecting them and the way that they do it,

00:08:35.660 but giving them the tools necessary to do it and not setting them up for failure either.

00:08:39.700 No, I think that's a good point. Less bureaucracy, more freedom. And honestly,

00:08:43.680 I think that's what a lot of, at least the one of the Indigenous people I spoke to want,

00:08:47.160 is they want to be able to live their lives and they should be able to live their lives.

00:08:51.220 Jennifer, is there anything else that you wanted to say?

00:08:54.420 No, I'm just very excited to be here.

00:08:57.180 Thank you so much for joining us.

00:08:58.500 Yeah, thank you.

Juno News - May 12, 2024

Indigenous conservatism, reconciliation & racist white liberals (ft. Jennifer Elle)

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