Manitoba voters have elected the NDP’s Wab Kinew as premier. His election is both a break with recent Manitoba political history and a continuation of the long history of Indigenous involvement in electoral politics in Manitoba.
Kinew is Manitoba’s first First Nations premier, though not its first Indigenous leader. That mantle goes to Louis Riel if we consider the legislative assembly of Assiniboia that named the Métis leader president in 1869 to be a legitimate precursor to the province of Manitoba.
A 2019 act that would have named Riel Manitoba’s first premier put the matter before the Manitoba legislature, but it never passed.
