Cherlyn Billy

Cherlyn Billy

Yesterday, I spoke with Cherlyn Billy, the British Columbia regional manager for the Nations Centre for First Nations Governance. The Centre helps build capacity within First Nations to get the tools and information that they need to self-govern in whatever way is best for them or as Billy said, “my job is actually just to support First Nations in their inherent right to self-government.”

She’s a member of the Shuswap Nation, near Cache Creek, but now works with the Centre on located on Squamish territory. She was first elected to band council at 30 and has a background is in law and anthropology. She’s been working with the Centre since February 2007.

I spoke with her about her work and what the Centre does in terms of self-governance.

Here are some parts of our conversation:

“First Nations people have been governing themselves prior to the Indian Act and the idea, all the work that we do is essentially support and assisting them and remembering that cause we’ve been doing it for thousands of years and it’s only now that we’re starting to remember the  work that we used to do before. Generally, we do a lot of it already and what I go back to and share with people is when it comes to family funerals, we don’t have anything written down that defines our role within that but we know what we’re supposed to do.”

“A lot of it has to do with the children. Whenever you’re looking at anything that you’re doing, you have to have a vision and a lot of times it’s not for yourself, it’s more for the children who are coming and the way we look at it is seven generations, thinking ahead for them and so what we need them to have in place.”

“I support and assist First Nations as they implement their inherent right to self-govern, not matter where they’re at. They could be implementing the treaty but it’s not my task to say that they’re, everyone has their own right to define how they want to move forward on self-government.”

“The idea is to make sure that we create a new memory. Our tag line at the Centre is, ‘Creating a new memory in the minds of our children,’ and the reason for that is because that’s essentially what we’re here to do is change the memories of the past, to creating new memories for the future so that they don’t have to deal with those same things that we’ve had to deal with. You have to change the story, right, to create something new for children.”

“We’ve worked this year with probably about 70 First Nations in British Columbia out of 202... a lot of what we do supports them so I think that kind of response speaks for itself in the sense that as a First Nations organization with First Nations people working within it, people have been really receptive to wanting to move forward and a lot of response that we get here at our organization and hear is, ‘it’s been a long time coming and it’s very appreciated.’”

“First Nations are beginning to define themselves and create what they want to see for their own nation and they’re doing in a way that honours and recognized the work of past leaders and assistors and elders before them.”

“I can’t tell people what works and what doesn’t work for their nations... we don’t stay the same and that’s probably been the best gift that we have as First Nations people is the fact that we don’t stay the same. If we were to implement, we kind of go with the flow, right and see how things can work for us. I don’t know if it’s the title for chief and council or if it’s the people themselves. A lot of times if you look at something, it’s not always the title of the individual but who they are as a person that defines their role in the governance structure... cause you’ll find that a lot of our people, they carry themselves with the values of our people, right, and those values, I think, are what maintain the leadership. They’re actually the ones that provide the foundation for our leadership, our values and our principals as people.”

“To be honest with you, B.C., we’re very complex. We have the most language grouping. We have the most nations and I think that we don’t compare ourselves. We can’t look at one model and say that’s going to fit all and that’s how we approach it hear because if you look at a lot of our court cases, they’ve all come, the major ones have come from B.C. and they’re not all the same basis and the reason for that has a lot to do with our diversity here, but I wouldn’t say that we would follow anyone’s model. I think that we’d probably define it the way we see best because that’s the way B.C. is. We look to things and develop it in the way that most fit our need, not the needs of the government.”

“You have to be very open-minded and you have to love the people that you’re working with and not try and impose your own views on them because we’re so complex again, like I said and I wouldn’t say that this one model would work for them because it all depends on what the community views as being valuable.”

“I have been involved in a lot of different areas with First Nations across the country, mainly in Ontario and British Columbia and saw that there was great need for a service such as this.”

“I think as First Nations, definitely that’s what keeps us going is our strength and our perceptions of things, but I think that what I’ve notices is that a lot of people, a lot of organizations are taking an interest in the area of governance. I think you see it not only all across B.C. but across the country. If even our National Chief is talking about moving beyond the Indian Act and beginning to strengthen our governance structures so not just the national centre but a lot of other nations, a lot of groups out there that are beginning to move ahead.”

“We’ve always had governance so I don’t know why it’s happening. It’s just people are becoming more vocal, that’s about it. We’ve always had this in place.”

“The more knowledge that people have about who they are, about knowing where they come from, I think that’s where you begin to find your voice in moving ahead. If there’s anything else, when you look at yourself, you become more, you can talk a bit more about a subject once you learn more about it and once you feel more comfortable with it, with the topic and the more that you hear people telling the story, the more you being to say, ‘OK, I’ve figured it out.’”

“A lot of education that people need for self-governance probably comes from knowing the past and understanding the past.”

“Different nations have different ways of moving forward but our nation has always been quite strong in terms of looking at our aboriginal rights and title... that’s one thing that I think has made our nation quite strong.”

“Communities are connected in some way through family so whenever I think about my nation, I think of it as being part of my family and I think that’s the way that they govern themselves is with that understanding.”

When I asked her what the most satisfying part of her work is , this is what she said: “It’s working with the people and seeing the change that’s happening within communities and seeing how our organization has grown in terms of the work that we do.”

“The Centre is doing what it’s intended to do and that’s to develop the materials that are needed to see the end result and see communities kind of evolve to where they were before and our role at the Centre is building capacity within nations and that’s where I see us moving forward is moving that along to another level, developing capacity in First Nations.”

 “When we’re looking at building our communities and our nations, we need to keep in mind all of the people who make up that community and that includes a lot of our young people and we need to make sure that we have, when we’re creating the new memory, is making sure that we’re providing our young people the tools that they need to be able to undertake the leadership of the community and move it forward because that’s what our ancestors did for us and it’s something that we have to continue to be mindful of doing in the future.”