Juno News - Inuit elder dismisses criticisms over mislabelled photo with Poilievre

00:00:00.000 and i mentioned this on the show yesterday and i wanted to revisit it this moment

00:00:13.060 that was captured on the weekend pierre polyev was having a very somber interaction at it was

00:00:20.300 on the national day for truth and reconciliation with an inuit elder and uh this became this rather

00:00:26.840 flurry this rather flurry of media attention on this when you had the liberal minister mark miller

00:00:33.580 uh you know try to be like well actually and say well actually she's inuit and not algonquin when

00:00:38.800 polyev was just saying in his tweet that he met with algonquin people and this woman was also there

00:00:44.380 and then you had the canadian press pick it up and pierre polyev tried to talk to the canadian press

00:00:50.820 about this in a very polyev-esque way yesterday but i wanted to go right to the source on this the

00:00:57.240 woman who was in that photo is a very well known and very well respected elder and she joins me now

00:01:03.900 manitok thompson wonderful to speak to you thanks for joining me today oh thank you um thanks for

00:01:10.420 giving me the opportunity actually i'm an inuit knowledge keeper and uh i'm a leader and at that

00:01:21.000 capacity when i was there i didn't go there as an elder i went there because i wanted to speak to

00:01:27.200 somebody about inuit issues and uh pierre polyet was there the liberal government has it seemed often

00:01:36.140 tried to think or pretend that it is the the party that speaks to these issues and it's the only party

00:01:41.740 that speaks to these issues and ideally every politician would respond to issues of inuit people

00:01:48.160 of metis people of first nations people so how did you feel when you talking to a leader of a party

00:01:54.600 became this political fight between the liberals and the conservatives i think that's so childish

00:02:02.120 just a bunch of children playing games with each other when there's other there's lots of priorities

00:02:09.660 in canada that has to be dealt with and i'm so glad i had a photo with pierre polyet i'm very glad he was

00:02:17.880 there it was the algonkin that led the ceremonies there were lots and lots of algonkin people inuit

00:02:25.800 but why would we take pictures of when people are hurting and praying and doing their ceremonies the

00:02:33.640 only photo that shows is me with uh pierre polyet and so when he put a statement out that he was happy

00:02:43.000 to meet with the algonkin elders and leaders um it was very clear that he doesn't mean we're all algonkin

00:02:54.760 because when i met him when i said i wanted to talk to him he was very open a very sincere person

00:03:03.560 and he said hello i said i'm anito thompson he said you were the minister in nunavut and nwt

00:03:13.000 so he knew who he was talking to and i talked about the inuit issues he he knew exactly who he was talking

00:03:20.680 to but of course the liberal public have twisted that to their advantage but you know it's the most

00:03:31.720 spoken photo right now and i'm very very glad to be in the photo with a conservative and you're

00:03:38.360 saying this not as a woman who has always or perhaps ever identified as a conservative you wanted

00:03:43.400 to be a liberal candidate at one point i was i was a minister in the nunavut territory and when i got

00:03:51.480 out of it i tried for the liberal party i went through all the steps and i i um i visited a lot a lot of

00:04:03.720 homes and i know there were a lot of people that signed up for the liberal party because of me

00:04:10.120 but the end of the day they didn't accept me they didn't accept my nomination they didn't want me

00:04:17.960 so why are they complaining now

00:04:21.960 do you often do you feel that inuit issues are often left out of broader discussions of indigenous

00:04:29.240 issues well actually down here yeah because we're so isolated so whenever i have a chance because i

00:04:37.320 live in calton place whenever i have a chance i go to any gathering and if there's a leader there

00:04:45.400 i make sure i get close to them and try to get an audience with them and in this case peer polliot

00:04:53.800 was very willing to talk to me and he gave me time to talk to him and he listened to all the issues

00:05:02.920 the reason why i do it is because we just have one chair in the parliament of canada there's nobody

00:05:10.440 else over there and for so many years we had liberal mps inuit two inuit mps for years and years and we

00:05:21.960 were backbenchers for all that time and i believe we were just being used as an extra motion person

00:05:30.760 that chair was being used just for the motion to put more numbers on one more number but when the

00:05:38.120 conservative got an mp leona gluca they made her a cabinet minister they respected inuit and um

00:05:50.440 i was very glad i'm very glad that there's been a lot of attention put on that photo and i'm glad i was

00:05:56.840 with pierre polliot now i mean i get the sense from what you're saying that you're the type who

00:06:03.400 will speak to anyone and and who will have these conversations but are you a conservative supporter now

00:06:09.160 are you a pierre pollieff supporter now i will i will support him because i've been sworn at i've been

00:06:18.360 told off i've been harassed by the liberal public out there through messages i um i was open to any

00:06:29.560 leadership to talk to me i've always been like that i'm not there for a selfie i'm not there to get a

00:06:38.040 photo taken with whoever but in this case i was very happy afterwards that i have a photo with pierre

00:06:45.320 polliot because um he was willing to listen and you know uh i really appreciated that

00:06:57.240 because of all the negative harassment i'm getting i will support this man

00:07:04.440 are you thinking of maybe getting back into politics yourself with a federal election coming

00:07:08.680 up would you run for his party actually i've been asked by some um by by some of the public down here

00:07:18.600 and um i'm not sure at the moment what i will do because every day i walk in to these gatherings and

00:07:31.480 i just speak to whoever can listen to the inuit issues and um that would be very interesting wouldn't

00:07:40.680 it be if i was invited to be nominated in one of the writings down here that would be something else to

00:07:48.440 have an inuk um member in parliament representing you wouldn't that be something else well and hopefully

00:07:55.320 if you do run they won't treat your nomination papers the the way the liberals did well uh it

00:08:01.000 was a delight to speak to you ms thompson thank you so much for joining me today thank you for this

00:08:06.680 time all right thank you thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by

00:08:11.720 donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - October 05, 2023

Inuit elder dismisses criticisms over mislabelled photo with Poilievre

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