What would happen if INAC ran out of money? How would First Nations survive?

This is the question that a group of entrepreneurs and economic development officers wrangled with during a two-day workshop on Six Nations Reserve this spring.

The viewpoints and discussions are to be developed into a policy paper. Tim Johnson, one of the organizers and owner of the Bear’s Inn in Oshweken, Ont., is a photographer, editor and academic who moved back to the territory and set up shop. He became involved with economic development, both in the public sector with the non-profit organizations and in the communities, and in the private sector.

The think tank came about through the work of the Six Nations International Development Agency. This non-profit agency was formed about three years ago by group of people in the community interested in international and national issues. Part of the objective was to get beyond the borders and confines of the territory. “We tend to localize all our problems and issues,” Johnson said.

“The work we’ve involved with is quite diverse and we structure SNIDA as an non-institutional entity to have the capacity to do things in wide variety of expertise. There is basically no staff. It is run by volunteers,” Johnson explained.

“It’s been very interesting because in the first minutes of this think tank we hit a particular point clearly. Some of the think tank participants currently work in tribal administrations, tribal governments and expressed concern that they would be quoted or misquoted.

“We had to establish a framework so there would be no direct attribution but you can say what you really see the problems as and this won’t come back to haunt you in your community.

“We thought it was important to bring together an independent thinking group. SNIDA doesn’t have an agenda.” (SNIDA’s role is bringing together people to analyze structural issues that impact communities and to be critical about the way Native cultures developed as a result of 100 years of dependency, Johnson said.)

“We were thinking that the ultimate position paper or policy paper that comes out of this process would be titled, Initiating Responsible Thinking”, Johnson explained. Part of that responsibility is to address the issues, even though they may be problematic within each community. He said this is the overall philosophy and guiding value that came out of the think tank sessions.

Johnson believes the number one point to be stressed is that control of resources by Aboriginal people themselves is fundamentally necessary for people to mature politically, to gain a better sense of what self governance means and to have the opportunities to do for themselves.

“In Aboriginal communities we need to start seeing our people as being the primary resource. Right now we don’t have in many cases any access to our natural resources and no control of transfer funds. We do have this sleeping giant of a sector of our people who are human resources.”

Johnson said he’s concerned about “the cycle to nowhere, where some folks go from welfare to a government training program that lasts for six months, nine months or maybe a year , then go on unemployment, no opportunities and back on welfare, then back to a training program...So our people get caught in cycle of revolving around this door and never really getting anywhere.”

The solution, Johnson said, is shifting the funding priorities, being honest from a community level that these cycles are not sustainable, inappropriate and actually create a culture of dependence. These programs are not at all based in market opportunities like a real job would be.

“At the community level, we need to have leadership, the courage to say that these programs are...creating these revolving door cycles. We need to talk with the federal and provincial government that provide these programs and say, ‘Listen, the resources are important to our communities but maybe we are not directing them in the right areas,’” Johnson said.

Instead, he said, money should go into capital to set up legitimate businesses to provide real jobs. Johnson believes that leadership must express to their communities that pushing negative statistics on unemployment, alcoholism, dependency and abuse, in order to get more money from various social programs, “so you can build another center this and center that” is not appropriate, not a part of Native culture and tradition.

“A lot of this grows out of culture of dependency and dependency begins with these transfer payments from the federal government. If you said this in a community hall...you’d have people with a vested interest in social services calling you down and everything. This is the importance of having think tanks,” Johnson said.