Supporting Our Own
- Trisha L. Cowie, BA (Hon), JD
- Mar 12
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 13
The opportunity to support the economic success of First Nation governments, organizations, businesses and peoples is here in the form of multi-billion-dollar developments, and we need to better leverage the opportunities being presented.
How can we support our own people?[i]
For long-term economic success, we need:
1) Leadership;
2) Policy; and,
3) Investment.
Leadership
At a local level, First Nation communities are tightly knit. If we’re not related, then we all know each other by very few degrees of separation. On a regional and national level, Chiefs and councillors know one another and are involved in various political organizations and initiatives together. Overall, there is a deep level of familiarity. That familiarity colours our professionalism in the workplace. This can have good and bad consequences.
As someone who works with her sisters every day, I can attest to the many ways familiarity shapes my professional interactions. The things we say, how we say it, and the decisions we make have a significant effect that ripples beyond our intentions.
Our relational proximity can be a good thing. Years back I was at a conference and struck up a conversation with an Anishinaabe councillor who eventually noticed my last name was Cowie. He asked if I knew a ‘Gerry Cowie, a hell of a hockey player’. Turns out his friend Gerry is my uncle Gerard. We hit it off and I got to learn about my uncle’s lasting impression on others. Eventually, we started discussing community needs and business services and found ways to help each other. To this day we continue a mutually beneficial professional relationship that all started with a community connection.
But as easily as a good word might be helpful in business, a bad word will cause immeasurable damage. I’m sure we can all think of a time when the words of others had a negative, lasting impact on our personal or professional reputation.
Recently, I read Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead. In her book she speaks about the need for courageous leadership and what that means. Among other insightful reflections, Brown characterizes ten different behaviours that get in the way of courageous leadership. One of those behaviours is avoiding tough conversations. Avoiding tough conversations can increase problematic behaviour such as pervasive “back-channeling”. Back-channeling is a term that describes a broad range of behaviors, all of which include not being direct or upfront with people. It includes sharing our reactions, emotions, or opinions with people before or after a meeting, rather than sharing them in the meeting. Other terms for back-channeling include the meeting after the meeting, gossip, and the dirty yes (where I say “yes” to your face and then “no” behind your back). Brown says that the goal should be to develop a culture where people have the courage to have hard conversations and refuse to participate in back-channeling. I agree with her on this point, we need this kind of leadership from each other.
In our tightly knit communities it can be easy to talk ourselves into avoiding tough conversations. We do not want to damage our relationships. We do not want to be hurtful to those we care about. We do not want to cause a rift in the community or family. However, that avoidance will likely end up causing the damage you were trying to escape, and then some. In reality, a tough conversation can help create stronger bonds, enhance respect for one another, support positive change, and lead to solutions through collaboration.
When it comes to back-channeling and gossip, no group of people is immune. However, because of our familiarity and closeness it can be more consequential in First Nation communities. What we say really matters. One of the easiest ways we can support the success of our own people is through leadership, which, among many other behaviours, includes having direct conversations and refusing to participate in back-channeling.
Policy
In corporate Canada, leaders in every industry are working to earn their Partnership Accreditation in Indigenous Relations (“PAIR”) certification from the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business. The purpose of PAIR is to “support progressive improvement in Indigenous relations”.[ii] It is a corporate social responsibility program.
Practically speaking, it requires companies to create and implement the internal infrastructure and policy to support the progression of Indigenous relations. This includes things such as developing an Indigenous Relations policy, or, creating and implementing the mechanisms to track the number of Indigenous employees that are retained by your company. It’s an important initiative because Indigenous peoples have been discriminatorily excluded from the Canadian economy. The PAIR program helps create corporate accountability to change that.
First Nation governments could adopt the concept of PAIR by creating and implementing policy to support our own people economically at home. This would align with Chiefs' and Councils’ desires to support their own people, align with people’s aspirations to support their own communities, and be an actionable step to ensuring those desires and aspirations, in fact, become reality.
A policy of this nature is also a form of resistance to the colonial system that seeks our assimilation and erasure. We need policy like this to combat the effects of the Indian Act, which has successfully separated people from their communities.
In Hiawatha, we are significantly impacted by the nuclear industry.[iii] One of the most recently public project ideas is to build a $200 billion, 10,000 megawatt nuclear power plant in Wesleyville. The Impact Assessment Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and Ontario Power Generation are approaching the Williams Treaties First Nations to consult. As part of the consultation process communities are being asked to participate in engagement sessions facilitated by non-Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous people are being paid to collect and organize information such as who needs to be protected in the affected area? What are our rights? What are our cultural practices? What are our responsibilities to the affected area? What values and principles should drive the assessment work? Considering the knowledge Anishinaabemowin holds, it is safe to presume there will be language aspects to the data collection.
As the consultation information is gathered, it will be organized, drafted, and contribute toward developing and implementing an Anishinaabeg environmental assessment process for the proposed Wesleyville project. This is years of culturally relevant work. Yet it’s non-Indigenous people who are making a living off our lived experience, it’s governments and proponents who are receiving valuable wisdom for the success of their multi-billion-dollar projects that sustain their extensive and well-paid workforces, all the while we are compelled to sacrifice our personal time, spirituality, and knowledge for a free lunch.
Why aren’t our own people being economically empowered to do the work that so obviously aligns with our culture?
This is not to say that there isn’t space for non-Indigenous peoples in our communities or in the work that needs to be completed. We should love our neighbours, and we should build a longer table not a taller fence. I will die on that hill.
And, where there is opportunity to learn about our cultures and languages (and actually be paid for it!), then the descendants of the ancestors who had their culture violently and racistly torn away from them should be prioritized. Reclamation and revitalization of our cultures and languages needs to be Indigenous led. I will also die on that hill.
For me, the solution to this problem begins with process. We need the internal structure and policies to support the goal of prioritizing opportunity for our own people. There will be occasions where that goal can’t be achieved. In which case, we need to understand why that is, and what is a viable, secondary solution. Is additional training required for qualification? Is there an opportunity to help businesses build capacity by collaborating with one another? Is the opportunity through a government or proponent? If so, how are our people and businesses being put at the forefront? Who is advocating for our inclusion? How do we get a seat at that table?
First Nation governments have the power to say two very important things:
We want this work to go to our own people; and
If it can’t go to our own people, then we want our own people trained and/or collaborating with whomever is hired.
These types of policies make things better by addressing the injustices of the past. They are essential for the short- and long-term economic success of our people and are required to begin leveling the economic playing field. Otherwise, what has always happened, will continue to happen in project development—we get gated out of existing corporate social structures and networks and non-Indigenous people and corporations will profit off our lived experiences.
Investment
Cash is King. There are different ways to make monetary investments that are helpful to the economic success of our peoples, and it should start with equitably (not equally) paying jobs.
In the First Nation context, this may mean paying our people more than what comparable workers off-reserve would receive. Why?
For starters, incentivization and talent retainment. Filling economic spaces with our own educated and experienced professionals is essential and it requires appropriate incentivization. Our Nations are bleeding talent because the six figure jobs needed to retain people just don’t exist in our communities.
Additionally, our people must know and carry the complexities of not just colonial ways and rules, but also the complexities of First Nation ways and rules in our work. We are the ones who are in the best position to execute and carry forward “two-eyed seeing”[iv] approaches. We are also compelled to do the reclamation work to support our cultural ways in our work life. Often, we are forced to be educators of non-Indigenous peoples in the workplace. Even though it is not our responsibility to educate others on their own history, it inevitably becomes part of our role. There is a lot of unrecognized, intangible mental workload in Indigenous employment.
Historically, we’ve been given none of the required resources to do the required work. We have been incredibly resourceful and for the most part have been carried forward by the strength and perseverance of those who came before us. I believe we need to honour our ancestors and Elders by trying to do better. Not being given the necessary resources throughout the past has had a cumulative, detrimental effect on our ability to meet modern day challenges. We are rebuilding our Nations while managing the crises created by colonial and discriminatory behaviours.
Our communities and our cultural ways also require additional resources. Practically speaking, our communities are remote and affordability is generally a factor. Culturally, Anishinaabe are taught to learn by doing, by being a part of the world and not apart from the world. To foster relationships meaningfully, means in-person communications and building authentic connections. More time and commitment need to be fostered into the execution of our jobs. This also generally leads to a slower pace that is not conducive with the speed of business. If we want people to put the time in that is required for quality work that keeps up with the speed of business, it can’t just be expected. We have to appropriately incentivize people’s time.
One of the elephants in the room when it comes to equitable pay for “Indians”[v] working on-reserve is the fact that if you are an “Indian” and you work on reserve, your income is not taxable. This reality has been used to force “Indians” to accept lower salaries and lower payment for work; the argument being that the lower, non-taxable salary or payment somehow equals a comparable higher, taxable salary or payment. This practise relies on “Indian” employers and businesses being the instruments of their community’s continued colonial oppression, makes one of the tangible monetary benefits we retain completely obsolete, and forces “Indians” to dilute the value of their services. Suggesting or forcing “Indians” to accept lower salaries or payment for work because their income is non-taxable is a practice that has no place in modern day workplaces and is inherently discriminatory.
So how could First Nation governments and businesses possibly afford paying our people more than what comparable, off-reserve workers would receive?
Time to go back to the multi-billion-dollar developments being proposed in our territories. The money is there, it’s just being directed into the pockets of non-indigenous people and businesses, or, is being used to entice Indigenous peoples to agencies outside our communities. Re-direct the money, make the investments internally and in a manner that allows our people to stay connected to and working with their communities. We must create the policies and processes within First Nation communities to champion this priority.
Results v Consequences
The goal of implementing any of these suggestions would be to support our own people. The results of implementing these suggestions have the potential to be much farther reaching:
We will retain high calibre, educated talent in our communities.
We will have governance stability and capacity.
We will align our individual aspirations with community purpose.
We will grow our local businesses and create local economies that are culturally relevant.
We will have imbedded succession planning and growth opportunities into our internal structures which will allow us to pass on knowledge and skills to future generations.
The consequences of not implementing necessary changes for economic success are already apparent--First Nation governments, businesses, organizations and peoples will miss out and be left behind. Again.
[i] “Our own people” can be interpreted in micro or macro terms—our own citizenship, our own community, our own Anishinaabe/Cree/Mohawk/etc, our own Indigenous peoples. It can be as narrow or as broad as you want it to be. Also, for the learners out there, “our” is not meant in the possessory, it is meant as a signal of belonging to a community.
[iii] Hiawatha First Nation is one of seven Williams Treaties First Nations whose territory has been forced to host Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, and is soon to be home to Darlington Small Modular Reactors. The proposed Wesleyville project would also be in the Gunshot Treaty territory.
[v] The term “Indian” in this paragraph is only used because it has specific legal meaning under the Indian Act.
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