From Chillin’ with Elijah Harper to Electing a National Chief: An Indigenous Political Journey

From Chillin’ with Elijah Harper to Electing a National Chief: An Indigenous Political Journey

MENTORSHIP, MOVEMENT-BUILDING, AND LEARNING TO WALK IN TWO WORLDS INSIDE CANADIAN POLITICS

February 8, 2026

Sneak Peek | Coming Soon

Before the headlines, before the elections, before the public record, there was mentorship.

Long before I ever worked on national campaigns or helped elect a National Chief, I was learning what it meant to walk in two worlds — to carry Indigenous responsibility into political spaces that were not designed with us in mind. That education did not come from textbooks or theory. It came from people like Elijah Harper, who showed a generation of Indigenous political organizers how to be present, prepared, and principled inside institutions of power without losing humility or identity.

What follows in the full piece is not a memoir, and it is not an endorsement of any single political path. It is a reflection on how Indigenous political leadership is learned — through mentorship, organizing, failure, discipline, and trust — and how those lessons carried me from federal party politics to First Nations governance, and eventually into the work of helping elect a National Chief.

This upcoming essay traces that journey honestly: from partisan organizing and back-room work, to national executive roles, to the realization that walking in two worlds is not just about identity — it is a method. A way of engaging power, data, people, and institutions with accountability to community first. The full piece will explore what that has meant in practice, who shaped that learning, and why those lessons matter now more than ever.

Full essay coming soon on IndigPoli.