Indigenous Perspectives: Stories from Indigenous Public Servants Episode 11 - Joining
" I don't think the solution is withdrawing and letting everybody else make the decisions. I think it's about joining the conversation and shaping the future. "
In this episode, public servants share their thoughts and feelings about choosing a career in the public service.
Duration: 42:17 minutes
Transcript
(soundbyte: Fannie Bernard)
"I don't think the solution is withdrawing and letting everybody else make the decisions. I think it's about joining the conversation and shaping the future."
(music: “Hoka” – Boogey The Beat)
Indigenous Perspectives. Stories from Indigenous public servants.
Tansi.
This is Indigenous Perspectives, a program where we hope to explore the experiences and perspectives of Indigenous public servants, what reconciliation means to them, and what it can be for Canada.
(music: “Spirit of Indians ” – Andrea Barone)
In a speech in 2015, Sheila Watt-Cloutier said
“The world I was born into has changed forever. I travelled only by dog team on the ice and snow in the Arctic the first ten years of my life. In my childhood, our small family was carried safely on our sled across the frozen land and ice with my brothers leading the dog-team. The Arctic may seem cold and desolate but to us Inuit families, it brought us and still brings us the most succulent and nutritious food, not to mention the greatest lessons are offered and learned on this icy terrain, helping to develop sound judgment and wisdom for our children. Inuit of my generation have lived in both the ice age and the space age.
“If we continue to allow the Arctic to melt, we lose more than the planet that has nurtured us for all of human history. We lose the wisdom required for us to sustain it. My life’s work has been about reminding people of their importance in the web of existence on this planet. My core message is that we are all connected. In the Arctic we may be far from the world’s corridors of power, but the Hunter who falls through the thinning sea ice in the Arctic is connected to industries of the South, the rising waters and stronger hurricanes which threaten the United States, to melting glaciers in the Andes and the Himalayas, to the flooding of low-lying and small island states.”
The hunter that she is referring to, but not named in her speech, is Simon Nattaq her neighbour in Iqaluit (Ih-KAL-ooh-IT), Nunavut (NOON-of-ut). His knowledge of the land and the water was vast, carried from generations before him. But in 2001, what was once a safe path over ice turned out to be dangerously thin.
When he failed to return home, the people worried, and search was begun.
Two days later, Nattaq was found. He'd crawled from the waters and survived, but his body had been ravaged by frostbite. In hospital, nothing could be done to save his legs.
A terrible tragedy unsettling to imagine, and yet but a single example of a single person harmed by the effects of the toxins released into the wind and the water.
In her memoir, The Right To Be Cold, Watt-Cloutier draws a direct connection between climate change and the rights of Inuit people. She characterizes climate change as the second wave of an assault on Inuit identity, who are still healing from the first melee, residential schools.
But what's the remedy? Well, with contemplation, every person in their heart and mind could imagine what they might do, which might seem insignificant individually, but would be enormously beneficial once multiplied millions of times by the same caring from other people.
And as for the government and the public service, it can be as simple and powerful as using the tools at hand: foreign policy, environmental policy, economic policy.
Policy is powerful. It's been the force behind terrible wrongs, but it can also be the force to right past wrongs, stop wrongs in their path, and deter wrongs in the future.
And now, in their own words, the thoughts and feelings of some of Canada's own public servants about choosing a career in the public service.
(flute: Greg Reiter)
TIM:
I think being an Indigenous employee in the public service right is exciting times given that the current administration's priority – high priority – on Indigenous relationships between the Government of Canada and the Indigenous peoples of Canada: the First Nations, the Metis and the Inuit. I think as an Indigenous person, we can be encouraged that it is a high priority of this Prime Minister and his and his government. That priority is embedded in the ministerial letters and there's expectations that each minister will do their best to improve the relationships between respective departments and Indigenous communities that they are involved with on a on a regular basis. So, I think, I guess the challenge then is to see how we might be able to contribute to that whole process. Taking our experiences and our knowledge and our heritage and the teachings that we've had all of our lives and bringing that into the conversations within the department that we all work in and being able to make a contribution to Indigenous policy and program delivery and the like for Indigenous peoples and communities but also internally with recruitment, retention, [and] career development policies, that each department is actively involved in. I'm most familiar with what's going on in ESDC and Service Canada and Labour and I know that it is a high priority for the department as a whole in terms of Indigenous awareness. Truth and Reconciliation report recommendation number 57 is being taken very, very seriously. And as the chairperson for the ESDC Indigenous Employees Circle, we are assisting the department with recommendation number 57 that calls upon all levels of government in Canada to educate and make their respective public services more aware of Indigenous histories, cultures, traditions, and issues both past, ongoing, and future but also to develop and improve on cultural competencies within the public service, the respective public services, so that these public services can be more effective in their relationships and their ongoing work with Indigenous peoples and communities. So, it's a high priority for us in ESDC, right from the Minister to Deputy Minister to senior leadership to the regional management teams, right down to the employee level and that's where the Indigenous Employees Circle has a lot of experience and knowledge as to what's going on at the ground level. It's not all good. We've heard recent stories where harassment and discrimination continues to be an issue in some workplaces. And just today, our Deputy Ministers and senior ADMs put out an all-staff communication aimed at that particular issue. Harassment and discrimination that's going on within the department that they hear about and the department's commitment to doing everything it can to address those issues in a very serious way. So, that's encouraging. So, I mean there are a lot of positive things going on in the public service as a whole and I know that it's happening in provinces as well. But at the federal public service level again it's a high priority. Departments are trying to find their way down the reconciliation path. They know that they need their Indigenous employees to help them navigate that path and to support the dialogue with Indigenous leaders and communities along the way. And, like I say, it's just an exciting time for an Indigenous employee in the public service to be able to have that opportunity. It's just a matter of senior leadership and managers, right down to the manager-level – the mid-manager or lower manager level – to not just only be aware of the talk and talk the talk, but walk the talk. That's the most important thing. I think as Indigenous employees, as Indigenous people, we have a certain perspective, a certain knowledge and experience in the way we've been brought up in our communities and our families that can really make a contribution but we really need our supervisors and managers support in allowing that contribution to be heard and to be able to lead by example. So, that's a message that the Indigenous Employees Circle is making loud and clear to our senior leaders who are very open to our input and our feedback and our perspective. Our Deputy Minister is a true champion. I see her as a true champion for reconciliation and Indigenous awareness and being proactive in everything the department can do in terms of recruitment, retention, career development, respecting and honouring the Indigenous territories upon which we all do our business. She's a real champion and has shown a real commitment to that. So again, it's just a great time and we just need our managers’ support to be able to take advantage of this time and contribute the way we can.
ANDREA:
I never in a million years thought I would ever work for the public service. When I started in 2004 I had just graduated Bachelor of Science in biology and prior to that while I was in university and even before that I was really involved in a lot of community advocacy work both on the environmental political side. So, the thought of coming to work for 'the machine' was really abhorrent for a lot of reasons. My very first job in the public sector was with Canadian Wildlife Service and I was combining two passions – the production of Indigenous traditional knowledge and species at risk. So, I got to take my science background and a lot of my community involvement and marry those into my first job. So that's that's kind of how it all started. I'm not trained in policy at all but I had all of this policy development experience from my advocacy work, specifically on the federal political kind of things prior to my life as a public servant. I used to be executive leadership for the Liberal Party of Canada specifically on the Aboriginal peoples commissions. I was encouraging Indigenous voices in federal policy making and trying to get more Indigenous candidates to run for the Liberal Party of Canada, which continues to be a problem, but it was definitely a big issue in 2004 on to 2006 and 2007 when I was with the party. So that's where my policy experience came from. It wasn't actually from formal education and my journey started from science and then I became a science bridge between people who worked on environmental assessment and people who engaged with Indigenous communities. This was before consultation with Aboriginal people was mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada. So I got to speak two languages which was understanding the community's perspectives on natural resource development but also understanding the science behind it. So I moved onto Environment Canada doing that kind of work as an Aboriginal Affairs advisor. Then Ottawa came calling. So I started back in the regions, back in Atlantic Canada where I'm from – in my home territory. Health Canada offered me a job at the First Nations Inuit Health Branch. It seemed like a good opportunity. I'm like, “Okay, I'll just come to Ottawa for a year. I'll just get some experience and then I'll go back. I'll go back to Nova Scotia.”
TODD:
How'd that work out for you?
ANDREA:
(laughs)
Well that was 11 years ago next month. It's funny because the journey that I thought I was going to have was, oh, I'll work in a government for a little while and then I'm going to go back to Nova Scotia, then I'm going to run for Member of Parliament, then I'll be Minister eventually. That was what I thought I wanted. Then I got here and I just got sucked into progressively more interesting work and my career developed as a result. I worked at Health Canada and then I moved on to INAC and worked in consultation and accommodation which is a tricky file. It was the beginning of the legal duty to consult. That's when I started that job. Did that for seven years. I had an ill-advised turn at Transport Canada in civil aviation. I wanted to do something out of the Indigenous world for a little while. Then I came back to INAC. Now I'm here.
TOONEEJOULEE:
In terms of INAC itself, some of the perceptions from the local community was, 'Oh. Why are you moving to the dark side?' We work against them, not with them.' So there was some of that perception, too, especially in some of the smaller communities due to the lack of trust. Then, fast forward 10 years with this current government looking at reconciliation and the way it works with First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities and organisations. I've been saying for a good year that it's a really excellent time to be an Indigenous employee in the federal public service, whether it's in the NCR, northern regions, or out west regions – any of the regions – because the commitment is there to work with Indigenous organisations and to also work with Indigenous [people] within government. So me, personally and professionally, I can definitely say I'm a really proud public servant and the reason for moving into public service much like any race whether you're quallunnaq, white, or any race really, one becomes a public servant to to help fellow Canadians.
DON:
And if you look historically, you would think that the last thing an Indigenous person might work to do is work for the Crown, given the history. But that said, I wouldn't necessarily ascribe behaviour or characteristics to Indigenous people in terms of their ability to deliver a work statement or vision, depending on where the individual might have grown up and what exposure they had to the culture and how deeply balanced they are between Indigenous and non – I don't like the 'non-Indigenous' word, I think we need a new one – but, you know, how well they balance that. I mean, there's certainly some advantages in terms of the ways of thinking, the values that people might bring to the job, thought processes and innovation and their own teachings in terms of how they behave and their contribution to the work. So I don't see that as being different than somebody of any other cultural difference, whether it's a person of colour or different country of birth. I don't think there's a disadvantage or an advantage. The only thing I think you think that might be different is the history of the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous Canadians.
JEANNETTE:
I came here because I wanted to work in French. I'm from Manitoba and at the point I left 20 years ago there were no further opportunities as I had already worked at CKSB, l'office national du film, la centre culturelle, I had taught in francophone schools. So there was nothing there. Now it's different. And it was also a personal choice. It was separation. I left my home province to pursue change.
DANIEL:
I didn't know that coming to this stage of my career that I was going to be a witness to all this change and potentially having the opportunity to contribute to it even if it's in a small way. But it's really exciting. I am part of a program called the Aboriginal Leadership Development Initiative. It's been going in one form or another since 2009. I think they have had four cohorts now of the program. I'm in the most recent one where they take up to around 20 Indigenous employees from across the public service. Initially it was just within INAC. This year we have representatives from INAC, ESDC, Parks Canada, Corrections, and I'm probably forgetting somebody and I'll hear about it later but it's cutting across more and more departments. I think the plan next year is to make it open to an even broader reach of participating departments, possibly. I'm not sure if it's going public service-wide but the objective is to broaden it. And, it's a very creative initiative. It's comparable in some way to what the [Policy] Horizons guys are doing, or what they did with the Canada 150 project, what they're doing now with the Canada Beyond 150 project. What the Blueprint [2020] project did is bringing people together from different professional settings, giving people a new professional network to rely on as well as access to new to specific training to support people moving into management roles. Obviously in this case, it being for Indigenous employees, it offers something that I had lost a little bit over the years in terms of having a professional network of other Indigenous employees, mentors, and peers who have similar experiences and bring similar perspectives to the workplace and that's of tremendous value. The training includes a cultural component where we get to do some cultural connections. Our group, we went to Cornwall Akwesasne and spent some time with community members and met some tremendous Elders in Akwesasne and we got to travel to the Iqaluit and met and learned from some incredible Inuit Elders and community representatives working in different areas and we're going to go out west as well. And what that adds to the experience is just a connection and integration of culture but allowing us to bring – because we're in those settings – it allows us to bring our own cultures and experiences and backgrounds into the discussion and integrate those discussions with discussions around work and training and leadership. So it's very valuable that way. It's a small scale program, so we've got about 20 people in the program this year. In any given cohort they can reach 20. If they double the size of the program they'll get to 40. If they quadruple it they'll get to 80. Well that's great, but the broader federal public service is well over 250,000 people. So, the program will help. It certainly helps us. Will it be able to change – to be a catalyst for change across a broader public service in terms of culture? That remains to be seen.
TODD:
Was it always your intention to become a public servant or is it something you just found your way into?
PAMELA:
Both of my parents were public servants.
TODD:
So it's almost like a curse.
PAMELA:
(laughs)
TODD:
Did you feel like you had a choice? Or did they sort of open your eyes that this is something that's important, that you could have an influence in and add your voice to? Because some kids they just want to run in the opposite direction of what mom and dad do. Like, I'm going to find my own way in life. So, yeah, tell me about that.
PAMELA:
So, my parents they ever really welcomed me or thought that this is some place that I should be – in the in a public service. So, I just grew up and all I knew was that I had to go to university after high school. So that's what I did. And during my summer job it was in the public service up in Yellowknife. So. when I graduated from university of course that was all I knew, was office work, and to get a job in government that was a thing for me. So that's what I did. And I think I did that probably because my parents did it too. And I always lived a comfortable life because they were in the public service. So I'm very happy to be a public servant today.
TODD:
Would you recommend it to other Indigenous people to join the public service? You didn't exactly… You had precedent, because your parents did it but they didn't necessarily say, “Hey, you should join.”
PAMELA:
No, not at all.
TODD:
Would you make that recommendation to other people – other Indigenous people – to join the public service.
PAMELA:
Would I make that recommendation to my son? No. And it's not because I have anything against public service. It's because in our culture it's my responsibility as a parent and what I've been taught is to find out what my child's gift is, or gifts are, and help work with that child on those gifts. And so in other words, find out what my child is good at and continue to help them get better at it. And all the stuff he's not good at, well you would never want to focus on that because there's no point in that. So right now his gift is working with computers and he can do that in the federal public service, but would I encourage him to do that? I would have to say no. From to my heart, honest to God, no. Because it's a tough place to work and you can make a lot more money, I think, doing other things. I think it's better to do what you came to earth to do. Follow your passion, and if that's the public service so be it, but I find it hard to work with your passion in the public service because it's not encouraged. So saying that, on the other hand I now know that working in the public service – I work in our sector with a lot of people who are very passionate about their job, and very passionate at engaging Indigenous people, who are very passionate working with their partners, who are very passionate about working themselves out of a job. And for me, to see the passion and the people that I've work with think and believe that, and working towards that makes me very happy to be working where I'm from. But, if that is the passion of a high school student or a university student to want to come and make a difference then you've got to have the right ADM. You have to have the right leader in place. And if you don't have that, then you're just doing your work day to day. You're doing your work the best way you can do it. But it's not going to go anywhere if you don't have an ADM that's going to listen or wants to make a difference with Indigenous people and their communities. And I'm fortunate right now that I do have an ADM that does want to make a difference and she's willing to listen. Very fortunate. So the answer to your question, would I encourage a young person, I would have to say to them to follow their passion, to follow their passion because it's hard to attend a government as an Indigenous employee.
TODD:
Why do you think that Indigenous people should consider a career in the public service?
JEANNETTE:
It's our land. It's our government. We're from the land, of the land, for the land, with the land. It's us and we need to keep it. We see climate change. We see the environment. We see contamination. It's a way of making a stand, of taking our rightful place. We have our own governance structures in our own nation. We need to go in terms of a global structure. We need to get involved. We need to get the others involved. It's a career and it doesn't matter at what level. We don't all need to be executive directors, but we need to be involved from the bottom up.
LEESIE:
I think they should because [the] federal government – the Government of Canada – is representing Inuit north of 60. We need to have Inuit in our areas in the sectors, departments, divisions so we could advance the Inuit portfolio even more so.
TOONEEJOUEE:
So I'd say it's comfortable. The opportunities are somewhat limited because of some of the language policies. But I'd say it's good. The first part of moving here was actually in support of the leadership at ITK because we were – “we” as ITK – were negotiating with the Minister of INAC on the creation of what was then called the Inuit Secretariat, which would become the responsible secretariat within INAC that would facilitate awareness and promotion of Inuit-specific issues in the department, because prior to that the department was heavily focused on First Nations and Metis policies and programs and funding allocations. So, throughout the negotiation of ITK and INAC at the time, the department recognized there was indeed a need to dedicate resources and an organisational capacity to address Inuit issues, anywhere from housing to post-secondary to land claim implementation. Those types of issues. So throughout that process one of the commitments was to bring in Inuit employees into the department who were familiar with Inuit issues, Inuit priorities, Inuit communities as a way to help bridge the new Secretariat into all the branches within the department, because one of the main roles of that Secretariat was also to educate other branches and directorates within the department. So Inuit felt it was really important that they had Inuit in the government to help promote and increase awareness. So throughout this process the president of the time Jose Kusugak approached me because I was in his office and asked if I'd be interested to move there either short term or long term to help the transition. So that was the whole process and I decided that I was interested to help promote Inuit in the department, but also job security, the benefits, the permanency in terms of pay, and just the security behind that because ITK is a proposal-based organization so no one was fully indeterminate or full time. So that's what brought me there.
RYAN:
It's kind of a tricky question. I feel like if somebody asked me – I was only in school just three or four years ago now – and I had a lot of interaction with students, and some people still ask me how… like, is it good to work for the government? And I say it definitely is but it's always frustrating – the decision process for everything that's done. And sometimes I find the decisions – and this is my personal opinion – the decisions that are made are not in the best interest of Canadians. It's just doing work for the sake of doing work. So, getting into the public service, it's great but for some people who maybe have a vast vision of their future… When I first started I wanted to get into video production. I wanted to do [inaudible] videos and cool things like that and then I heard that this government position that was coming up and it was with CRA. And I had a lot of hesitation because I thought it would be a boring job. But we've done some pretty cool stuff. And I've come into different groups and it depends. You've got these feast or famine moments where you are really having a good time enjoying your job and its pretty cool. But I think that in the private sector there's just a little bit more. They cut off the fat, so to speak. There's just a little bit more focus, maybe a little more aggressive, it leads to cool projects and things like that. And people ask me, is it a good idea to apply for government and I always tell them it depends what you're looking for. If you're looking for job security and cool stuff, you're going to get it, but it's not going to be every day. I've told other people that it is for them because sometimes you don't need that aggressive job.
TODD:
For Indigenous people that have a very negative perception about the federal public service, what could you say to try to make them excited as individuals that they really could make a difference to be enacting change, to be contributing towards policies, to adding their perspective in a way that would actually see a difference in changing the way that our government, or at least the public service, works.
FANNIE:
I think that the government is honest in wanting to be inclusive and fair and transparent. So, I think that joining the conversation is going to be a fair and productive conversation overall and I think there's power in numbers so I don't think the solution is withdrawing and letting everybody else make the decisions. But I think it's about joining the conversation and shaping the future with, as I mentioned earlier, all the different perspectives.
TODD:
I've talked to some other guests that have… They've experienced, I guess, some negative feelings, almost as if they're siding with 'the big machine' by becoming employees of the federal public service. What could what could you say to try to alleviate concerns that that Indigenous people that come to work for the public service are being co-opted, they're being pulled in, and it's dividing their loyalties.
TIM:
Well, I mean, that's been the history of government policy in Canada for over 200 years. Assimilation. I mean, that's what the Indian Act has been all about. That's what some of the treaties are all about. That's what government policy is all about. And when government policy has tried to do their best to assimilate Indigenous peoples in this country for so long you can't help as an Indigenous person to feel that you're becoming part of this assimilating machine that's trying to gobble up your identity, your culture, and your world view. It's just a natural thing. The Canada School of Public Service has got a new Indigenous Learning Series and there's two sessions that's being delivered right now across the country. One of the sessions is the blanket exercise which is just a powerful, powerful exercise that shows what the relationship between the Europeans and the Indigenous communities in Turtle Island has been over the last five hundred years. And it's just incredible to see from the time of contact to what it is now and the huge decimation of the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples and their ways of life. It's just a huge, huge experience and it really shows what happened there. But it also shows some of the good things that are happening, coming from the resilience of Indigenous communities and people along the way. Things like Shannon's dream where she dreamt of a better education system for kids and better schools and clean water in communities and things like that. The Orange Shirt Day where people are fighting back from the impacts of the Indian residential schools. And the Truth and Reconciliation report and the recent apologies from the Government of Canada to the Indian residential school survivors and right across the country. So, we can't help but feel that they've been trying to enforce assimilation all along. But the Indigenous community, the Indigenous peoples have been resilient and they're fighting back and we're slowly gaining our proper place in Canadian society where we're equals and we will not be assimilated. We can integrate. Integration is very different from assimilation. When you integrate, you can integrate with your culture and your identity and your worldview intact and it's a partnership. It's a reconciliation process to bring those cultures and the world views together so that we're going down the path together. Working for the government and the whole reconciliation process and being allowed to make the contributions that we can make from the experience and the background and the cultural knowledge that we have so I can certainly see where people are coming from, but we have a real opportunity to change that. We have a real opportunity to stand up and be proud of our cultures and our traditions and our heritage and our perspective – how we think about things now and how we feel that the Indigenous perspective should be brought into policy development and program delivery to get better results. So, we have that opportunity and I guess we can stay feeling that it's not a comfortable place but if we all do our part to make it a more comfortable place, to make it a more respectful place, I think we can come out of this with our culture and our integrity intact and not feel that we're being swallowed up by that by the machine and becoming robots. You've just got to take a stand and get involved and make the contribution that you can that you can contribute from the Indigenous perspective. For so long, I mean I talk about government policies and how they tried to assimilate us for hundreds of years – the Indian Act – and that's what it is. It's an assimilation policy that still exists today and that's been fought all along the way and some ground has been made and eventually that department that stigma of that government department will slowly fade into the past and hopefully the new road will be one where people can make equal contributions, and not be assimilated and be made to feel that we're lesser than anybody else and we need a department to take care of us and we can't take care of ourselves. I think we're slowly… we're in the healing process now. We're in the reconciliation process. There's commitment from senior levels in the government and we've just got to do our part in making sure that that we hold onto that commitment and we do our part to make sure that it works for everyone.
Indigenous Perspectives: Stories from Indigenous Public Servants is a production of Employment and Social Development Canada
All opinions expressed on Indigenous Perspectives are strictly those of the individual and are not necessarily those of their employer.
Public servants featured in this episode were Fannie Bernard, Don Bilodeau, Andrea Dykstra, Jeannette Fraser, Ryan Jeddore, Daniel Jette, Tooneejoulee Kootoo-Chiarello, Pamela Kupeuna, Tim Low and Leesie Naqitarvik.
Our main title music is by Boogey the Beat, with additional music provided by Andrea Barone and Greg Reiter.
I'm Todd Lyons, host, writer, and technical producer for this series.
Thank you for listening.
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