G OV E R N A N CE
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Steps to
Nation-Building By Blair Shakell
George Herb, better known as Satsan, shares information on the rights and needs of First Nations people in one of the National Centre for First Nations Governance’ many sessions on building sovereignty
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n November and December, First Nations audiences in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Rama, Ontario gathered for the first of a series of one-day forums on nation-building. The ‘Seven Steps to Nation Building’ was organized by the National Centre for First Nations Governance (NCFNG) and the keynote speaker, who happens to be its founder and president, Satsan (Herb George). If those in attendance had expected this seminar on self-governance to be deadly dry, they were certainly surprised when Satsan began his address with this statement: “Aboriginal rights and title have not been extinguished; they are a fact in the law, recognized, sustained and progressively refined by the Supreme Court, time and again, in landmark decisions from Delgamuukw, to Marshall to Michisew. We’re not talking about rights we used to have in the past. Or rights we may hope to have in the future. We’re talking about rights we have now. It is from this point that we move forward to take practical ownership of our rights by taking up the tools of self-governance and systematically defining and building our nations.”
26 DECEMBER 2010 • NATIVE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MAGAZINE
A Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief of the Frog Clan, previously speaker for both the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en Nations, as well as an adjunct associate professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, Satsan served as an elected BC Regional Chief for the Assembly of First Nations and on the AFN National Executive, where he cut his teeth heading up the community-based Delgamuukw/ Gisday’ wa National Process. In the most fundamental of senses of the term, the NCFNG is scrupulously nonpolitical, neither advocating for one expression of political will nor another. It seeks, instead, to serve as a resource to aboriginal peoples, helping them to define and develop the structures and processes of self-governance most appropriate to the history, culture and circumstances of their particular First Nation. Since its formation in 2004, the NCFNG, with offices in British Columbia, the prairies, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic regions, has been providing professional and technical support, research and education services to First Nations seeking to implement their inherent right to self-government by defining their strategic vision and evolving appropriate governance practices. In British Columbia alone, the NCFNG consulted with 61 First Nations communities during 2010. To those who would suggest business enterprises that support economic self-sufficiency should take precedence over indigenous self-government, Satsan replies: “All First Nations wrestle with significant constraints such as a lack of funding, the restrictions of the Indian Act, and poverty; yet effective governance is the