Despite a long-winded 78-day election campaign, there has been barely a whisper about the issues facing aboriginal people in Saskatchewan and across Canada.

The main party leaders have paid little mind to murdered and missing aboriginal women, deplorable living conditions on many reserves, and the government’s response, or lack thereof, to the recent recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Instead, the focus increasingly has been on the handful of women who want to cover their faces at citizenship ceremonies. And while the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP continue to squabble over the niqab, statistically, some 33,000 aboriginal people, mostly women, have fallen victim to violence since the writ dropped.

“One of the challenges in the campaign is that (aboriginal) issues have gotten very little traction. If you look at the debates, and there were four of them, there was not a single question in any of those debates on First Nations or aboriginal issues,” said University of Regina political scientist Tom McIntosh.

“There was the occasional reference to something, but there was no sustained discussion in any of those debates, in either language, about these issues and that’s a sense of frustration.”

That frustration was palpable at a recent panel discussion on the indigenous vote in Regina. Many of the participants didn’t mince words about their contempt for the Harper Conservatives.

“We hate the Conservatives. I do,” said panelist Del Anaquod, a professor at First Nations University of Canada.

“I think how a lot of our people feel is how a lot of Canadians feel. Two-thirds of Canadians want a change.”

Such discontent is partly driving a general increase in political activism among aboriginal people, McIntosh says.

“It’s always been there, but I think it’s more visible, it’s coalesced more; it’s stronger than it was in the past,” he said.

“There’s a level of anger and frustration that is much closer to the surface than I’ve seen it in the past 10 or 15 years.”

The Tories’ talking points on the campaign trail, which are clearly tailored to the party’s base and middle-class swing voters, suggest that, as in past elections, the Conservatives aren’t counting on aboriginal votes to win.

But McIntosh says there’s inherent risk in ignoring aboriginal issues, even though indigenous voter turnout has traditionally been low in Canada.

“In playing to your base, you’re also alienating some of those non-aboriginal voters who do have some sympathy for those issues,” he said.

“It’s not just (Stephen Harper's) base versus aboriginal voters, there are also non-aboriginal voters who think those aboriginal issues need to be engaged in.”

Philip Brass, a member of the Peepeekisis First Nation, says aboriginal people must engage in the electoral process to get politicians to pay attention to their issues.

“Legislation and governance is always a reflection of the voters’ will,” Brass told the panel discussion. “If we want to have a voice, if we want influence in Ottawa, we have to vote.”

According to Elections Canada, the on-reserve voter turnout rate in Saskatchewan was 46.4 per cent in 2011, lower than the national rate of 61.1 per cent.

“I’m going to be voting and I make no bones about it,” First Nations Elder Verne Bellegarde told the panel discussion.

“I want to vote because I believe that we can make a difference if we get our people out.”