On the phone from Thunder Bay, Sol Mamakwa laughs when asked how he first arrived in provincial politics. “I had no interest at all,” he says. “None. I actually told the NDP no.”
Mamakwa, who grew up in Kingfisher Lake First Nation, an Oji-Cree community, life and politics have always been rooted in what he learned on the land.
“I grew up spending spring and fall out there with my parents. Whatever we caught, we ate. Goose, fish, muskrat, beaver… whatever the land gave us,” he recalls. “That’s where I learned everything, my language, the names of the creeks and islands, the meaning behind those names. The history of my ancestors is in the land.”