Election 2025 in the NWT: Rainbow Eyes’ interview

Rainbow Eyes, also known as Angela Davidson, is hoping to become the next Member of Parliament for the Northwest Territories.

The deputy leader of the Green Party since 2022, she says she believes the party “truly represents the people on a grassroots level,” is uplifting Indigenous voices and shares Indigenous values.

She highlighted reconciliation, empowering Indigenous governments, renewable energy, addictions treatment and housing affordability as key northern issues on which she hopes to focus.

More: Read the Green Party’s platform

Rainbow Eyes says she wants to work with other leaders to create change. She says she would bring to the role of MP her experience as a councillor at the Da’naxda’xw First Nation in British Columbia and forest defender on the front lines of the Fairy Creek blockade.

She is currently appealing a 60-day jail sentence for her part in the 2021 Fairy Creek protests against old-growth logging.

The Green Party has described her as a cancer survivor, passionate advocate and “critical voice in slowing resource depletion and addressing the climate crisis.”

While she does not live in the NWT, she said she plans to travel to the North in the coming weeks to speak with residents – and would move to the territory if elected.

Federal Election 2025: Cabin Radio’s election hub
Register to vote: Learn more from Elections Canada

Four candidates are running to be the NWT’s next MP in the April 28 election.

Kelvin Kotchilea is running for the New Democratic Party, Rebecca Alty for the Liberal Party and Kimberly Fairman for the Conservative Party. Cabin Radio intends to publish interviews with all four in the coming days.

A live radio debate featuring three of the four candidates will be broadcast from 8pm on Thursday, April 10. Fairman declined an invite to take part.

It is unclear whether Rainbow Eyes or Angela Davidson will be the Green candidate’s name on the ballot when you go to vote in the NWT. The candidate told Cabin Radio Rainbow Eyes is the name she prefers to go by.

This interview was recorded on March 27, 2025. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Emily Blake: What made you want to run in the Northwest Territories?

Rainbow Eyes: I think running right now for the Green Party is running for a message that every Canadian needs to hear regardless of where the people are. I think we’re in a very important time in history.

Are you able to expand on that?

Yeah, absolutely. What we’re seeing down south with Trump, as well as in our own system in Canada with the political leaders, I know Canadians need a voice to represent the people, the real people. I come from a First Nation, the Da’naxda’xw First Nation. It’s a remote community. I sit on my nation’s council. I’m in my third year term, so I know how to represent, and I have been representing my own people in a remote community, so I have that to go off of.

Why do you believe you are the best person to represent the Northwest Territories at the federal level?

Because I come from the forest, Fairy Creek, Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience. I come from a place of people coming together to create change, different kinds of people working together: dreamers, architects, engineers, the kind of people that are in society trying to figure out the situation in our world.

I think what Canada needs as a whole is leaders that will find ways of working together when we have different ideas on how to figure out our future together. And that’s what I have lived through over the past five years at Fairy Creek as well as in my own nation. That is how I’ve lived and breathed the past five years.

So I would be so grateful, so honoured to be able to go up and represent the Indigenous people, which is 50 percent of Yellowknife, 90-percent Indigenous people outside in the Northwest Territories.

I know that I already feel deeply connected to the people of the Northwest Territories, because I feel deeply connected to the people from Fairy Creek. I know we’re in a time where the people are unifying and we’re finding out that, no matter where we are, we’re connected. I know that deeply already.

Why do you believe the Green Party is the best party to represent the Northwest Territories?

The Green Party really, truly represents the people on a grassroots level. They don’t represent industry. They don’t represent the old boys’ club. It’s truly a party that’s working for the people, that’s working on taxing the rich or the upper elite, and working on affordable housing.

And really, which is important for Indigenous people and all people, it’s reconnecting to our food and finding affordable food solutions and growing our communities, too, which is really the Indigenous way.

The Green Party is really the only party that’s lifting up the Indigenous voice. They have the Indigenous Peoples Advisory Circle and they’re really, really doing so much to bring in Indigenous culture as much as they can – it’s a political party – but to really help with policymaking and helping within the party to figure it out.

It’s unlikely the Green Party will form the next government. What do you see as the role of the Green Party over the next four years?

I think it’s growing awareness, and I think that’s what we’re seeing globally. I think even global greens, that’s what we’re seeing.

The Indigenous people are really connected to the Green Party, because the green values are connected to Indigenous values and it’s a colonized world. So the Green Party is really helping lift up Indigenous values because they share the same values.

And I think over the next beyond four years, my lifetime, we are working against a colonial system that has oppressed us since – my Elder, Elder Bill Jones, who is from the Pacheedaht First Nation, he said – since the time of Alexander the Great.

It’s up to those of us today to gain courage, to change the path that we’re on. And I feel like that’s the path of the Green Party as well, which I love to say I feel in my heart that the Green Party is the path towards the rainbow nation, which is all the races of the world coming together to help change the world. That’s the Green Party, their values are leading towards the rainbow nation.

What do you see as the biggest issues facing the North that need to be addressed at the federal level?

I talked to the CEO of the Green Party and really had a good conversation with him, because I really want to know – and I’m actually travelling up to the Northwest Territories in the next few weeks to connect more with the people – but a big focus for them is actually reconciliation and figuring out how to ensure that the nations in the North are represented by the people and not the government, and not controlled by the government.

So empowering the nations in their own governance and rights and title to their land, because I know mining and industry is a big issue up there. Renewable energy is big too. It’s such a remote area, renewable energies. And I think as well, all across Canada, we’re having a drug epidemic, so I think support for the people in the North to have addiction treatment is really important as well. And of course, there’s housing affordability, so I think those would be the focuses.

I know you’re currently not based in the Northwest Territories but is your plan to move here if you were to win the seat?

Absolutely. I would get in a U-Haul van with my partner and two cats, and we would love and be so excited to move up to the Northwest Territories.

You talked about how you’re going to be visiting here in the next couple of weeks. How have you gone about – or are planning to go about – engaging with people in the Northwest Territories?

We would love to do meet-and-greets. We also have a few documentaries about the forest protection that we’ve done on Vancouver Island, and we would love to do some movie nights to show Rematriation, possibly the Yintah documentary, and we would probably look into other documentaries that are significant to the Northwest Territories.

We’ve been contacted by a radio show. And of course I would love to go visit the nations up there as well. That’s always been my focus since becoming deputy leader. I’ve always dreamt of being able to travel to Canada and visit nations and talk to them and understand what they want and bring it to the Green Party, because I know that a lot of nations aren’t ready to give their support behind any of the political parties because they know the corruption.

But just to go talking and connecting to communities is something that’s always been close to my heart.

Can you explain a little about your role as the party’s deputy leader?

Yeah, I’m really grateful to be deputy leader. I think it’s a really good networking tool. It’s a way to meet people and really get to gatherings, like Cop15 that was in Montreal a few years ago.

I’m able to go and meet people, meet different organizations, and really help represent the Green Party and spread the messages that we’re all trying to get out there right now when there’s so much misinformation.

So getting out there, meeting people and meeting people face to face and having really good conversations is what’s been really good for me about being deputy leader.

At the start of our conversation you mentioned the Trump administration. What do you think would be the best way to respond to tariffs and US-Canada relations?

I think the one good thing that I’m seeing come out of the Canadian government right now is unity. The sense of unity and peace-building is the message that we have to get out rather than combatting and pointing out what’s wrong.

I think in order to move forward in a good way, we have to really focus and just keep saying we are in this together, unity, peace-building, as well as continuing to really come forward with strong policies and platforms that actually make a difference.