The race to become the NDP party’s candidate in an upcoming byelection once again has an entrant.
Eric Redhead is resigning as Shamattawa First Nation chief to seek the nomination to fill the vacancy created by the December 2021 highway accident death of former Thompson MLA Danielle Adams. Last week, Redhead resigned his post as acting grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs in place of Arlen Dumas in advance of announcing his provincial political ambitions.
Redhead was born in Thompson and spent much of his early life here, working throughout his 20s for what is now the Northern Regional Health Authority before moving on to a role as a crisis response co-ordinator for Keewatin Tribal Council and then as a Shamattawa-based employee of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak’s crisis response program.
While living in Shamattawa, Redhead was elected to the First Nations’s council and is resigning during his second term as chief, but he says he was always interested in politics, remembering that he served as junior chief of Shamattawa while attending school there.
“I’ve always gravitated towards politics for sure,” he told the Thompson Citizen Aril 18.
Redhead says he thinks his experience in First Nation politics will serve him well if he secures the NDP candidacy, which seems likely, as the nomination meeting is less than a week away and he is the only publicly declared nominee, as a result of former Thompson city councillor Oswald Sawh announcing his intention to seek the candidacy and then withdrawing shortly thereafter.
“I thought there were some big shoes to be filled” as a result of Adams’s death, Redhead says. “And I thought I would be the person to fill those shoes.”
Although it is a different political arena, Redhead believes that he knows what it takes to be successful, pointing to the efforts he made to convince the federal government to send the military to aid Shamattawa during a time of crisis in the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There was no protocol,” he recalls. “There were no steps to take. It was a lot of advocating and pushing, being consistent, because you see a need and you have to make sure to fulfill that need.”
As a former frontline health care worker, Redhead has experience that relates to provincial politics. As a lifelong northerner, he also has firsthand knowledge of another important issue: highways.
“It’s really unfortunate that the provincial government has frozen maintenance for highways for the next three years,” he said. “I think that’s wrong. Our infrastructure is crumbling and we need a strong voice to make sure that the north gets its share and I believe I’m the right person to do that.”
A date for the byelection had not yet been set as of April 18, but Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew told the Citizen last week that he believes it may take place in May, with that month basically being the campaign period.
“We look forward to being able to put a strong candidate forward,” once the nomination process concludes, he said.
Whether or not the province has announced a byelection date by the time the NDP nomination process concludes this weekend, Kinew says the party members in Thompson will probably not waste any time.
“I think you’ll see us launch our local campaign and have all the Thompson NDP activists and supporters starting to canvas and get out in the community and surrounding areas and talk about our plan to help folks.”
