YEARS IN MAKING
The birth of NCH was years in making, yet it took a confluence of numerous serendipitous events in 2019-2020 to make the organization come into being.
LIKE MANY OF MY PEOPLE, I ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD WELL OUR INHERENT NATIONHOOD
I have grown up grounded in strong Anishinaabe nationhood values. I have learnt much from my elders and my relatives of my relational accountability to my lineage.
Two events from when I was a teenager I recall well —
A budding fisherman, I was around 13 years old when I was out fishing on Lake Michigan with a group of men from a neighbouring town. As the day progressed, we saw a border patrol boat moving towards us. We had crossed the border unknowingly! Anyway, we got taken to the border office and were questioned. While my friends were taken into custody, I was escorted with good treatment back to my community. With my precious catch of fish well intact! That day I realized, even as a young teenager, the power of my inherent and Treaty rights.
Another incident that has a strong imprint on my mind is when I was out fishing near the island across from my community. It was late in the day, the water level on the side bank had receded more than normal. On seeing something unfamiliar, I steered my boat closer to the shore edge. What I saw sketched out was a time worn outline of a northern pike - my Clan. Even after years of erasures and colonized border mapping, there lay, clearly, the symbol of my peoples Clan System governance.
SERVING OUR PEOPLE
I look back to my past decades of social and advocacy work for our children, our land, and our culture and I see many like me on the same journey. Grounded in the values passed down by our ancestors, having the uninterrupted connection with these lands that only we can, sure of where we have to go as self-determining nations, we work in the roles and capacity that we find available to affect change. From band council to Tribal council to regional political platform, I grounded every piece of my work on nationhood thinking. I was inspired my many leaders . Some of who are -
DECISIVE MOMENT
It was the summer of 2018; I had recently lost getting re-elected as the Regional Chief of Ontario. And I found myself at a fork on the road. It had been 15 years of serving as a political leader, advocating for my people through the political bodies Canada had created in the last century, in a time period when the winds of change for our people were supposedly coming. Yet, the needle on nationhood seemed to have not moved.
So, do I continue on the path I was on for the past few years or do I get on to a different path for nationhood work?
CONFLUENCE OF MANY FORCES
As I built an advisory firm called Bimaadzwin (simplified translation- a good path in life) for providing a range of services for economic development of our nations, the seed was laid to start a non-profit institute that could provide volunteer services to those of our nations that are worst impacted in asserting their land rights. A former work colleague and an initial plan developer was headed at that time to University of Victoria (UVic) to study Indigenous Nationhood. Timing seemed right to build the required scholarly heft behind this idea.
While at UVic, in 2019, collaborations with legal and other Indigenous professors were built and the name Nationhood Council House formalized.
By end 2019, early 2020 we started witnessing some of the largest movements globally - most were related to Indigenous land rights ( like, Unist'ot'en) , environment (like the youth climate activism).
And then COVID hit.
Here was an opportunity to make the shift. To not go back to how things were. To envision a decolonized world post-COVID.
We moved to set up the NCH advisory with some of the most accomplished Indigenous leaders of Turtle Island. In 2020, NCH was registered as an Indigenous led non-profit organization.
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