National Post - Financial Post Magazine
DRIVING IMPACT FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ACROSS CANADA
Climate change, COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement and the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools across Canada have led to a new social awareness, one that has people and governments in Canada considering their relationships with and treatment of Indigenous peoples. It’s been a long time coming.
Tabatha Bull, Dr. Jacqueline Ottmann and Amy Wright, this year’s WXN Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 honourees in the Canadian Tire Community Impact category, are purpose-driven leaders using business, education and health care as levers to drive positive change for Indigenous communities across Canada.
Here are edited excerpts of our conversations with these change-makers.
Tabatha Bull is Anishinaabe, a member of Nippising First Nation, and President and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB)
We are a not-for-profit business association and will celebrate our 40th anniversary next year. Our mandate remains the same: Support Indigenous autonomy and Indigenous entrepreneurs by connecting Indigenous and non-indigenous businesses.
Our research team leads the country in researching the Indigenous economy, working with Indigenous businesses to understand current needs. Right now we are looking at how intellectual property applies to traditional knowledge. There is a recognition today by organizations and investors that Indigenous communities have to be partners in infrastructure and resource projects, that this land is Indigenous land and that traditional knowledge brings value.
In the past three years, our membership has more than doubled to 2,100. As an organization we are being invited to sit at tables we were never invited to before. This year I attended the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City. Canada was the only country that had Indigenous representation. It’s going to take decades before we can feel we can repair the generations of wealth we have
lost, but I feel optimistic about the future.
One of our longest-standing programs is called Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR). It’s similar to B-corp certification except it looks at what an organization is doing to advance Indigenous relations. We grew from 100 organizations in 2019 to 240 today. Uber and Starbucks are now part of the program alongside banks and resource companies. Shareholder proxies have gone forward requiring businesses to develop TRC action plans and Indigenous procurement policies. We now have two lists on the TSX: one for organizations that are PAR certified; the other for organizations that are PAR committed.
There are more than 60,000 Indigenous businesses in Canada. That number is growing at nine times the rate of nonindigenous businesses. As we reflect on the past 40 years and look forward to the next 40, we want to support all Indigenous businesses. Procurement is a major priority. We are working closely with the federal government to help achieve its minimum 5 per cent Indigenous procurement target. That alone could put more than $1B into the Indigenous economy. This is how we are going to move the dial and begin to see self government and self determination happen.
Dr. Jacqueline Ottmann is Anishinaabe (Saulteaux), a member of Fishing Lake First Nation in Treaty Four, President of First Nations University of Canada – the country’s only national Indigenous University
As an infant, I was given a traditional name by a community elder. Our languages are very verb- and experience-oriented. My name is a type of thunder you feel over a large landscape. That name has given me a sense of purpose and destiny.
Even though we don’t have a good historical relationship with formal schooling, it was encouraged by my parents and grandparents with the idea that through schooling we will be able to gain access to spaces that historically we couldn’t.
I knew I wanted to educate general society and demonstrate Indigenous philosophies and practices – which are beautiful, sophisticated, complex and have an important place in our world today, especially when we consider climate change – and open doors for our students to step through.
One of the most impactful things I’ve done is change systems, structures and policies that are demeaning and divisive; that create barriers for Indigenous students. At the University of Calgary, I co-chaired the development of an Indigenous strategy that recognized university processes and Indigenous decision
“As an organization we are being invited to sit at tables we were never invited to before Tabatha Bull
making frameworks. It was a new way of creating a strategic plan and became a roadmap for the entire university.
I led a similar project at the University of Saskatchewan. Those experiences led me to Paris, France last December where I was invited to speak at an OECD event about reimagining education and the role of democracy within education from an Indigenous perspective.
As President of First Nations University, I’ve come full circle because I’m in Treaty 4 Territory. I have this opportunity to serve my community, to focus on educational and economic reconciliation. Legislation like the Indian Act closed the door to post-secondary education and the economy to Indigenous peoples. Engaging meaningfully in society when your children are taken away is difficult.
This university has been in existence since 1976. Our foundation is Indigenous knowledge systems first and the university has been actively working towards self determination since its inception.
My vision is to carry that forward. People are coming to us as a source of knowledge about our histories, traditions, practices, languages, knowledge systems. We are the only Indigenous university member of Universities Canada and are seeing more universities creating Indigenous strategies. That is very hopeful.
Amy Wright (RN, PHD) is a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner at Mcmaster Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto, where she focuses her research on how Indigenous mothers experience health care needs
For the past 10 years, I’ve worked with the Hamilton Regional Indian Centre in Ontario speaking to Indigenous mothers about their health-care experiences and facilitating community-led research projects to meet their needs, their goals, in their way. I’m led by them, their ideas, their projects. All the work is directed by steering committees composed of community members.
I felt compelled to start on this journey after my experience working in a neonatal ICU in Saskatchewan. When I did my orientation, they spent an entire day talking about how to care for the Indigenous clientele and meet their needs. It was eye-opening. I grew up in Ontario next to Six Nations of the Grand River, the largest First Nations reserve in Canada, but I hadn’t seen any cultural consideration.
This was in 2011, a period when a lot of moms from far Northern communities were sent south at 34 weeks gestation because there were no birthing services in their communities and traditional midwife practices had been outlawed with the Indian Act. These women were on their own, isolated, for a six-week period. Things are changing now but that lit a fire in me.
The participants in our first study were from diverse Indigenous backgrounds but they had similar traumatic experiences with European-based care that was not culturally safe and often punished them rather than wrapping them in support, which is what the Hamilton Regional Indian Centre does. Its services are all under the same roof working to keep families together and build them up. Our systems don’t work that way.
The moms are warrior women. They are brave and wanted to share the experiences they had with health providers to improve health care for themselves, their families and their communities. We got funding and created a series of videos called Healing the Hurt: Caring for Indigenous Moms & Babies initiative. That research has since been taken up in almost every province.
People are coming to us as a source of knowledge about our histories, traditions, practices Dr. Jacqueline Ottmann
The moms are warrior women. They are brave and wanted to share the experiences they had Amy Wright
There is a new project called Fathers of the Next Generation. There is a lot of hurt to heal from the residential school legacy, and some haven’t had a healthy upbringing because of that. This is a way to reset and stop the cycle of intergenerational trauma.