(By Murray Mandryk / Regina Leader Post.)
REGINA.
The First Nations party of Saskatchewan is planning to apply for official provincial party status on Wednesday.
And presuming the chief electoral officer verifies that the 2,500-plus signatures the new political movement has collected are in order, the First Nations Party’s first order of business will be finding a candidate for the yet-to-be-announced Regina Elphinstone byelection.
“We’ll have a candidate,” said party founder Brendan Cross in an interview Friday.
“I think it would be a good experience for members (of the First Nations Party) to be part of that byelection.”
“We aren’t going to wait. We want to jump in right now and get our feet wet.”
Cross, who noted in his new release that he resides in Regina Elphinstone himself and might be interested in the nomination, also believes the First Nations Party has an obligation to an estimated 200 residents of the riding that signed his petition for party status.
“We already have more support than the Sask. Party does,” he said of his membership in the Regina inner-city riding.
First, though, the First Nations Party will have to complete its application- a process that Cross started last April when he unveiled the idea.
“In my naivete, I thought I could do it in one weekend at a powwow,” he said, referring to the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College powwow on the April 1 weekend in Regina when he signed up the party’s initial 300 members.
But Cross said he has taken some solace in the fact that the electoral office told him it generally takes between six months and a year for new parties to gather the critical mass to qualify for party status.
Since then, Cross personally visited 40 of the province’s 58 constituencies with his petition, focusing on reserves and inner-city natives.
His efforts were further hampered by the lack of support from already established native organizations like the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN).
“The FSIN is an organization that is made up of 72 chiefs across the province- a large portion of whom haven’t determined whether native people should even vote provincially or federally,” Cross said, adding the organization also takes the position that its chief shouldn’t be active in any political parties.
But supporters of his new party take the approach that First Nations people must become more active in provincial politics because of issues like the coalition government’s decision in the March budget to extend the provincial sales tax to off-reserve purchases made by status Indians.
“They are desperately looking for a voice inside the legislature- not a protest outside.”
Cross envisions a First Nations Party government one day negotiating with the FSIN on issues related to its responsibility of administrating the business on reserves.
Forming government in Saskatchewan would likely require the white vote supporting his party, Cross acknowledges.
But he says people shouldn’t assume white voters won’t support this party and what it stands for.