Wab Kinew

Kinew is a member of the Onigaming First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He was raised in the Anishinaabe tradition, and his father, Tobasonakwut Kinew, was a residential-school survivor who became a chief and later a professor of Indigenous governance. That heritage, and his father's journey from the harm of the residential-school system to leadership and reconciliation, shaped much of Kinew's outlook and his later work.

Long before he ran for office, Kinew built a public career in the arts and the media. He earned recognition as a hip-hop artist, worked as a correspondent and host for the CBC on both radio and television, and served as a director in charge of Indigenous relations at the University of Winnipeg. In 2015 he published a memoir, The Reason You Walk, about his relationship with his dying father and their shared path toward forgiveness, which became a national bestseller and a widely read account of Indigenous life in Canada.

Kinew entered politics in 2016, winning a seat in the Manitoba legislature for a Winnipeg district. The following year he was chosen to lead the Manitoba New Democratic Party, becoming the first elected First Nations leader of a major party in the province's history. As leader of the opposition he rebuilt the party's support, and at the 2023 provincial election he led it to a decisive victory.

Kinew was sworn in as premier of Manitoba on 18 October 2023. His election was widely noted as historic: he became the first person of First Nations descent to be elected premier of any Canadian province, and Manitoba's first Indigenous premier since the Metis leader John Norquay in the nineteenth century. In office he has focused on health care, affordability, and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, while presenting himself as a pragmatic leader seeking to govern for all Manitobans.

Kinew has spoken and written openly about a troubled younger life, including run-ins with the law in his early twenties before he turned his life around. Opponents raised these episodes during his campaigns, and Kinew has publicly acknowledged his past mistakes and expressed remorse for them, framing his recovery and change as part of a story of redemption. Supporters have pointed to that turnaround as a source of his connection with people who have faced similar struggles, while the matter remained a point of political debate.

Wab Kinew's rise from musician and broadcaster to first minister of a province is one of the more remarkable recent stories in Canadian public life. For many Indigenous people his premiership carries a symbolic weight far beyond Manitoba, as a sign that the highest offices in the country are open to First Nations leaders. How his government is judged will rest, as with any premier, on its record, but his place in the history of Canadian politics is already secure.