Brittany McGrattan is a 20-year old pastry chef at St. Anne’s Bakery in Grafton, Ont. She is Six Nations Mohawk and says the environment and Indigenous issues are the most important to her in the election.
“I hope that they put a plan into action to help prevent climate change and restore the environment,” she says. “And that they actually follow through with the reconciliation with the Indigenous rights.”
While McGrattan doesn’t discuss how the current government has been handling Indigenous rights, she does believe Canada needs someone who is actually going to care.
“I found out — I think last month — that one of the residential graves had actually had fresh bodies put into it. And it never even made the news,” she says. “But there were like, 500 women and children found. So I want someone who’s actually going to care about that.”
McGrattan also believes working toward reconciliation is important, and by giving back some of the land and following more Indigenous traditions, it will benefit the environment.
“That is what we do. We care for the land,” she says. “So it would help the overall climate if they follow more so how we used to live, in terms of respecting the environment.”
While McGrattan says she doesn’t feel politics affect her personally, she says she does believe it affects society as a whole. And the current political situation, she says, focuses less on fixing things, and more on the back-and-forth between the parties.
“I don’t follow much of the media on the election, but from the parts that I do hear, it sounds more like banter than valid points.”
