Canada’s First Nations helped Trudeau win. Now can he give them justice?

At just 43, Justin Trudeau has become the new prime minister of Canada. A humble family man who seeks to build on the legacy of his father, Pierre Trudeau, the Liberal party leader has won not only a surprise majority, but also the support of the country’s most overlooked demographic – the indigenous community. Comprising roughly 1.4 million people, the First Nations tilted the vote in favour of the youthful Trudeau, who declared that he sought to “renew the nation-to-nation” conversation between aboriginal Canada and the rest of its peoples.

Canadian election: opposition parties urge new ties with aboriginal people

Now that Trudeau has decided to address Canada’s indigenous community, attention is drawn to its fraught colonial history, and the new leader’s quest to make the biggest scheme of reparations to aboriginal people in Canada’s history.

Understandably, large parts of the community are sceptical of his proposals. The former prime minister, Stephen Harper, took a hard line in comparison to the progressive Liberals, and his refusal to deal with indigenous human rights issues has further damaged the relationship between the government and the community. When it was revealed that nearly 1,200 women had gone missing or been murdered in the indigenous community in the past 30 years, Trudeau pledged to launch an “immediate” inquiry, which will be essential in gaining the trust of the Native community.

While the New Democratic party declared that it would press for the inquiry to take place within the first 100 days of government, Trudeau’s party is already flailing with the figures. Jody Wilson-Raybould, a Liberal party MP and aboriginal woman, said: “I’m not going to speculate on how soon, but we did use the word ‘immediately’ [in the campaign].” It is this line between emotive rhetoric and precise strategy that could lead the Trudeau administration into trouble.

Half of indigenous children live below the poverty line as a result of the horrors of the reservations

Although that sense of distrust might seem odd to the most sceptical of political bystanders, it is understandable why some aboriginal people might not be willing to trust the first white man willing to make a promise. Trudeau has unveiled plans to spend $2.6bn (£1.3bn) on improving the poor state of indigenous education, but critics are unsure where this money is coming from – the previous Liberal government insisted on a 2% cap on aboriginal education spending. And Trudeau must tackle the root causes of educational inequality rather than just throwing money at the problem. As late at 1996, indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, Canadian government boarding facilities in which they were frequently beaten, tortured and raped. To this day, roughly half of aboriginal people complete secondary school education, with half of indigenous children living below the poverty line.

Trudeau needs to get the basics right before he can gain pace on issues of social equality, and it appears that the basics will take a long time. Two thirds of all indigenous water in Canada has been under an arcane “boil water advisory” at some point since 2004, with 400 out of 618 First Nations communities without a secure supply of drinking water. The reserve community Shoal Lake 40 has its drinking water shipped in on a faulty barge, and has not been given the funds to build a road that would allow it to create a desperately needed water treatment plant. In a pledge to eliminate boil water advisories over the next five years, Trudeau declared that they were “not right in a country like Canada”.

Trudeau has inherited far more than his father’s legacy as the next leader of Canada. Left to rectify a history of indigenous distrust, he must act swiftly and efficiently on his promises to unify aboriginal Canada and the rest of its people. Although money doesn’t appear to be a problem when it comes to Trudeau’s plans and commitments for the community, an overhaul of the root causes of these horrendous issues of social equality needs to be made in order to ensure that the leader is listening to his people in the nation-to-nation conversation, rather than being a one-way barrage of idealistic, well-versed Trudeautopia.

Jasmine Andersson