Romeo Saganash

Catherine Clark talks to NDP MP Romeo Saganash about his life Beyond Politics.
Romeo Saganash bagged his first moose when he was 12, not unusual for a young Cree growing up in the bush near Waswanipi in Northern Quebec. Like most Cree children of his generation Romeo was sent to Residential school when he was 7 and spent the next ten years hearing the plaintive cries of his classmates being sexually abused. When Romeo was 18, and he had left school, he was asked to attend a meeting on the negotiations between the Cree and Government officials on constitutional and resource rights and Romeo was so taken by it that he decided to go back to school and become a lawyer so that he could take a role in helping his people. Romeo did just that, and for the next 25 years he worked with the Grand Council of the Crees, the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Rights and the Cree Nation Youth Council. In 2011, Jack Layton asked Romeo to run for the NDP and he did, becoming the MP for Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou.