Local small businesses mean jobs and economic freedom for First Nations
Small operations are the key for natives, chief says
DIANNE RINEHART - October 17, 2007
'Small business is the No. 1 economic driver in every province," says Chief Clarence Louie, of B.C.'s Osoyoos Indian Band. "It's no different for aboriginal communities."
Chief Louie's people prove his point. In the past decade, the south Okanagan band, with a population of only 450, has built an impressive business portfolio - including the award-winning Nk'Mip Cellar winery, a four-star hotel, and desert golf course - with annual budgets in excess of $17-million.
As a result, the band administers its own health, social, educational and municipal services.
"Most of the Osoyoos Indian Band members believe in making money," Chief Louie says. The businesses they have started "contribute tens of millions of dollars" to the surrounding communities and generate hundreds of jobs, he says.
"We've proven what can happen when the focus is economic development," says Chief Louie, who is also chairman of the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, which advises government on investment strategies for aboriginal economies and business creation.
"I want to see more and more First Nations across the country creating jobs and making money and taking their inherent rightful place in the economy," says Chief Louie, who was elected leader of his band in 1985 and is also chief executive officer of the Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corp.
He notes that 98 per cent of the $10-billion the federal Department of Indian Affairs spends every year on reserves goes to social programming - while only two per cent is for economic development.
"If you're going to deal with aboriginal poverty, the economy should be the No. 1 issue, the same as it is with non-aboriginal people," he argues.
"To me it's common sense. Look at the G-8 countries: the economy is the No. 1 issue," he says.
"Then look at the Third World conditions on Indian reserves across Canada - because those First Nations don't have a self-sustaining economy."
Chief Louie describes Canada's traditional strategy of funding social programs on reserves as a "100-year-old failed formula," and urges that more money go toward programs such as Aboriginal Business Canada, which helps native entrepreneurs open and build small businesses.
He points out that ABC's annual $40-million funding program isn't that "big in the scheme of things," compared with the billions spent on aboriginal services, such as unemployment and welfare payments, health care, housing and education.
"To me, the solution is not throwing more money at aboriginal ills," the Chief says. "To me, it's throwing more money at building an aboriginal economy that contributes to the provincial and federal economies."
He cites a U.S. study, known as the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, which found, after 20 years of research, that "only those tribes that focus on economic development are breaking the poverty cycles."
Breaking the poverty cycle - throwing off the social-security blanket that has enveloped Canadian aboriginals for decades - can only happen with stronger native economies, he says. And the will to change must come from aboriginal communities and native leaders themselves, as well as the federal and provincial governments.
"You can't just throw money at Third World conditions without bringing in some sort of economy and self-generating small and larger businesses," he says.
"The reality is there's not enough money to go around. Unless aboriginal people start making their own money, the social-service blanket syndrome will continue decade after decade."
That's why he believes small business holds the key for Canada's aboriginals. "Small business could be the economic engine that supports all the social [programs] in a community," he says, as it does for the Osoyoos.