Getting Our Belongings Back
Being born First Nations means that you’re born into politics—that’s the reality we face in this country. My father became chief of Siksika Nation after he was our tribal administrator for 30 years, so I grew up in a political household. For me, understanding the process of fighting for our rights and for our ways of life to be honoured and respected through diplomacy and politics all goes back to Blackfoot traditional values of humility. For as long as I can remember, we have been fighting for our rights. In 1990 I ran for council here at the Siksika Nation, and during the 10 years that I held that position, I worked on a number of different portfolios of the nation’s affairs, like education, finance and culture. In that time, our culture department was aligned with the First Nations Confederacy of Cultural Education Centres (FNCCEC), which was considered the sister organization of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN).
The FNCCEC represented close to 80 cultural centres across Canada, and it provided the AFN with the research they needed to forward legislative change to the federal government. I became president of that organization, and in that time our two main initiatives were to push for legislation to protect
