Diandra Bruised Head announces candidacy for federal election

Diandra Bruised Head recently announced that she’ll be running for the Green Party of Canada as their candidate for Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner in the upcoming September 20th federal election. Bruised Head is a current councillor for the Kainai Nation, and graduated from the University of Lethbridge in Environmental Sciences. She also worked as a Climate Change Coordinator for the Blood Tribe.

She says there needs to be a stronger focus on community led solutions for our country. “When I say community led solutions, I’m saying we need to put community led planning and strategies that include the voices of the youth, seniors, and the vulnerable, and how these are going to address climate change. I think we need to put more emphasis on STEM education. Such as sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. From there, leading that into employment opportunities.”

Bruised Head says there needs to be a shift in the paradigm for how Canada treats the land. “Making space for nature means making space for people. Having people who wouldn’t normally think of that job by going out and planting and distributing seeds from Native grasslands. That itself is a job. That’s a pretty lucrative business at this point, because we have a lot of businesses and industries looking for reclamation.”

Her plan if elected, is to put an emphasis on community leading community.

Bruised Head says one of the pressing issues in Canada is the pandemic. “We’re seeing higher infection rates now because of the delta variant. It’s such an adapting situation. It’s changing day-to-day. Prior to COVID, we saw a society that was steamrolling into unsustainability. We saw it with the IPCC reports, climate change reports, loss of biodiversity. It was cool to me because we got to see people paying more attention to wildlife around them. It was cool to see that awareness being raised, and how we were treating wildlife and the land.”

She adds that on the opposite end, there was an increase of opioid deaths on the Blood Tribe. “We’re seeing emergencies being called on First Nations because of suicides, and youths who are killing themselves. We’re losing generations. We’ve already lost so much, which we saw with the social awakening and awareness of residential schools. We’re still continuing on this path of the loss of hope.”

The Green Party of Canada just released their platform for the election, which will focus on tackling climate change, providing social safety nets, and developing action towards reconciliation along with tackling systemic racism.