Hundreds more aboriginal voters in northeastern Ontario voted in federal election

Morning North7:12Surge of First Nations voters in October's federal election

During the federal election last fall, we heard that more First Nations people were going to vote... and boy did they ever... by the thousands. CBC reporter Erik White told us what he found after crunching the numbers for the northeast.

Ballot boxes on First Nations in northeastern Ontario were much busier during last October's federal election.

Voter turnout on reserves in the region jumped to 63 per cent, compared to 45 per cent four years earlier a difference of about 2,200 votes.

Some First Nations saw small increases over the 2011 election, while others saw massive leaps of dozens of percentage points and hundreds of ballots,

University of Toronto political scientistPeter Loewen,who is originally from North Bay, says there's always been variations in voter participation from community to community. Nationally, there's been ups and downs in aboriginal voting before, but he told CBC News that the2015 federal election was different.

"What we have this time is a more uniform increase and a uniformly higher increase in participation by aboriginals than in other any election," he said.

Numbers for off-reserve aboriginal people are harder to calculate, but Loewen theorizesthere wasn't the same surge in turnout in that population because they're not as easy to mobilize.

'The grassroots rose up'

The 2015 election also saw the birth of lobby groups encouraging first nations people to vote, including Rally the First Nations Vote started byTyrone Souliere from Garden River First Nation.

His group organized registration clinics and public forums across the country.

But he said the turnout could have been even higherif First Nations chiefs had more actively encouraged their members to vote in what indigenous people have traditionally seen as the election of a foreign government.

"It was so new in some areas that people were kind of frozen and afraid to move ahead. But I think they've learned their lesson," Souliere said.

Soulierealsobelieves this election marks a sea change for first nations peopleand predicts they'll now be asking more of their elected leaders,whether they work in the House of Commons or at the local band office.

"I think our leaders have seen that, 'Hey the grassroots rose up and things changed. Why stop now?'"

Loewensays the key factor in whether aboriginal people continue to vote in federal elections is how well the new Liberal government addresses their concerns.

"If they do a very good job, you can imagine they'll be rewarded at the ballot box. If they do a terrible job of it, you can imagine they'll be punished," he said.

"The question will be if they do a middling job of it, which is normally what we do, will they be rewarded?Will they be punished or will turnout just fall away again?"