Wab Kinew

Kinew is Canada's first provincial premier of First Nations descent, and Manitoba's first Indigenous premier since Métis Premier John Norquay in 1887.

Wabanakwut "Wab" Kinew (born December 31, 1981) is a Canadian politician who has served as the 25th premier of Manitoba since October 18, 2023.

Wabanakwut "Wab" Kinew was born on December 31, 1981, in Kenora, Ontario.

From the Onigaming First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, he is the son of Tobasonakwut Kinew, a former local and regional chief and a professor of Indigenous governance at the University of Winnipeg, and Dr. Kathi Avery Kinew, a policy analyst.

Kinew moved to suburban Winnipeg with his parents in childhood and attended Collège Béliveau, a French immersion school, and vacationed in Onigaming in the summers.

After being a member of the hip-hop groups Slangblossom and the Dead Indians in the mid 2000s, Kinew released his debut individual CD as a rapper, Live by the Drum, in 2009.

The CD won an Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Award for Best Rap/Hip-Hop CD.

In 2010, Kinew was a finalist for the Future Leaders of Manitoba award and lost to Canadian filmmaker and director Adam Smoluk.

Other notable finalists of the award include Olympic champion Jennifer Jones, radio personality David 'Ace' Burpee, friend of Bell Let's Talk Karuna (Andi) Sharma, artist Kal Barteski, and Canadian restaurateur and philanthropist Sachit Mehra.

His second CD, Mide-Sun, followed in 2010.

In 2011, the University of Winnipeg named Kinew its first director of Indigenous Inclusion.

Kinew has been a reporter and host for the CBC's radio and television operations, including the weekly arts magazine show The 204 in Winnipeg and the national documentary series 8th Fire in 2012.

He is also a host of the documentary program Fault Lines on Al Jazeera America.

The Reason You Walk is a memoir that chronicles the year 2012, during which Kinew strove to reconnect with the Indigenous man who raised him.

In the book, Kinew details his point of view on several controversial matters related to his past, including convictions resulting from alcoholism, his assault of a taxicab driver, and misogynistic and homophobic lyrics from his music career.

A reviewer for The Globe and Mail commented: "the undeniable significance of The Reason You Walk's message, and the fact that the book holds so much for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal readers, makes it a must-read. This is not just a memoir, it's a meditation on the purpose of living."

He graduated from the University of Winnipeg Collegiate, a private high school which Kinew said in a 2014 interview was "one of the best in Winnipeg."

Kinew went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Manitoba, later pursuing a master’s degree in Indigenous governance.

Kinew began working in broadcasting after the Winnipeg Free Press published a letter to the editor which he had written about Team Canada hockey, and a local CBC Radio producer contacted him to express interest in creating and airing a documentary feature on the matter.

In 2014, he appeared as a panelist on CBC Radio's Canada Reads, defending Joseph Boyden's novel The Orenda.

The novel won the competition.

Kinew was a guest host of Q for two weeks in December 2014, and moderated the 2015 edition of Canada Reads.

In 2014, Kinew was appointed associate vice-president of Indigenous Relations after Jennifer Rattray resigned the position.

He is also an honorary witness for the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

On October 25, 2014, Kinew received an honorary doctorate degree from Cape Breton University.

Kinew has written a total of four books—The Reason You Walk, Go Show the World, Walking in Two Worlds, and The Everlasting Road—all published by Penguin Canada.

Kinew considered running for the leadership of the Assembly of First Nations in its 2014 leadership election, but decided not to mount a campaign as he was newly married in August and felt that it was not the right time to be away from home for an extended period.

Kinew was honoured with the 2016 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for non-fiction, for this book, which comes with a $10,000 cash award.

In 2016, he was announced as a Manitoba New Democratic Party candidate for Fort Rouge for the 2016 provincial election.

During the final days of the campaign, misogynistic and homophobic tweets and other social media comments were discovered by media on Kinew's Twitter feed.

This created a scandal with calls for the New Democratic Party to drop Kinew from the ballot.

Following an apology for his past comments, at the election on April 19, 2016, Kinew defeated Manitoba Liberal Party leader Rana Bokhari in the riding of Fort Rouge.

Kinew has served as the leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party (NDP) since September 16, 2017 and served as Leader of the Opposition prior to the NDP's election victory in the 2023 Manitoba general election.

He represents Fort Rouge in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.

Before entering politics, Kinew was an author, musician, broadcaster and university administrator, best known as a host of programming on CBC Radio and CBC Television.

In 2018, Kinew published a children's book, Go Show the World: A Celebration of Indigenous Heroes, about notable figures in First Nations history, including John Herrington, Sacagawea, Carey Price, and Crazy Horse.

He was inspired to write the stories of such people by Barack Obama's Of Thee I Sing, and K’naan’s song Take a Minute.

The book went on to make the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for young people’s literature – illustrated shortlist.

In 2021, Kinew released Walking in Two Worlds, a young adult fantasy novel published by Penguin Teen, in which an Indigenous teen girl is caught between the real world and a virtual video-game universe.

The book won Kinew an Aurora Award for science fiction and fantasy in 2022.