Judith Sayers, of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council, said she’s not surprised by Mark’s decision given that Indigenous people in positions of power face “really ingrained attitudes, biases, prejudice, racism and hatred.”
Following MLA Melanie Mark’s announcement she plans to resign from elected office, her colleagues and First Nations leaders are calling for structural change to make the legislature more welcoming for Indigenous people and women.
“It’s a big wall to scale” to change those attitudes, she said.
Describing the legislature as a “torture chamber” that is “allergic to doing things differently,” Mark said she was worn down by the attacks lobbed in the name of political points.
When Premier David Eby calls a byelection for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, which must be held within six months of Mark’s resignation date, she said she’ll “do everything I can” to make sure another Indigenous woman runs as the NDP candidate.
Mark, who was raised by parents with addictions in the “projects” of East Vancouver, said she overcame “abject poverty” to fight for Indigenous people who are over-represented in jail and among the homeless community.
“That’s why I came in here to fight and we need more people like me coming in here to fight,” she told reporters Wednesday.
With her mother by her side, Mark said her resignation was especially difficult given her constituency includes the Downtown Eastside where her mother lives.
Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first Indigenous attorney general, left the Trudeau government during the SNC-Lavalin scandal and wrote a book, Indian in the Cabinet, that criticized the prime minister for a lack of progress on Indigenous reconciliation and criminal justice reform.
Experiences such as Mark’s “either sends people running in the other direction or maybe it makes someone say, ‘Hey, that’s not going to happen to me, I’m going to change this,’ ” Sayers said.
Mark, who is Nisga’a, Gitxsan, Cree and Ojibway, attended a Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs meeting Thursday at the Musqueam First Nation, where she took part in a blanketing and brushing off ceremony intended to bring her strength and protection.
Mark, a 47-year-old single mother who was elected in 2016 and served as tourism minister and minister of advanced education, also said her decision to leave politics was influenced by her desire to spend more time with her daughters, aged 12 and 19. Mark said in a CBC Early Edition interview Thursday morning she’d like to see more flexibility for politicians who opt to work from home so they can be with their kids.
“We need to take seriously the number of women who are leaving maybe prematurely from the work that they’re doing,” Furstenau said. “We have to ask ourselves about the the kind of conditions that politicians face and that women face as politicians. We need we need that diversity of representation.”
B.C. Liberal MLA Elenore Sturko said Mark’s resignation presents an opportunity to have a larger conversation about the experience of women in politics and the demands of travelling to the legislature in Victoria while leaving your kids and family behind.
Eby, who stood beside Mark at a press conference on Wednesday after her emotional speech in the house, pledged that the government will “do better” to become a more inclusive place for Indigenous women.
“People who have lived the life that Melanie Mark has, they are needed in this place,” Eby said. “And when she tells us what we need to do better, we need to listen, to understand and we need to act on it.”
Adam Olsen, B.C. Green MLA for Saanich North and the Islands and a member of Tsartlip First Nations, said while he doesn’t experience the legislature in the same way Mark did, he is “dismayed” by the concerns she brought up, saying it’s a “wake up call” for MLAs to collectively make it a safer space for people from diverse backgrounds.
“To think that we have gone from a handful of Indigenous people in this place to one less with the work that we’re doing right now (on reconciliation) it makes me sad,” he said.
Asked about Mark’s characterization that the Opposition was “awful” to her, particularly over her handling of the controversial $800-million plan to replace the Royal B.C. Museum, B.C. Liberal leader Kevin Falcon said he accepts that’s how Mark feels.
However, Falcon said the Opposition’s role is to ask hard questions of the government to keep them accountable and when it came to the Royal B.C. Museum plan — reversed by former premier John Horgan after public backlash — that’s what the Liberals did.
