22 Spring/Summer 2026 Exclusive access at no or reduced cost to events – including our annual conference, workshops & Coffee Meet-Ups Free monthly newsletter Free Members’ Portal offering – a searchable funding database, a mentorship program, resources & much more Free member support Free procurement support Visit OFNEDA.ca to RENEW/ SIGN-UP First Nation Membership WHO IS THIS FOR? Economic Development Officers (EDOs), Economic Develop Corporations (EDCs) or Tribal Councils. Entrepreneur Membership WHO IS THIS FOR? Ontario’s First Nation Entrepreneurs who are building and growing their businesses. BENEFITS BENEFITS OF YOUR OF YOUR 2026– 2026– 2027 2027 MEMBERSHIP MEMBERSHIP STAY CONNECTED $750 $750 PER YEAR PER YEAR Associate Membership WHO IS THIS FOR? Any business or person. Associates include industry partners and students - especially those on the path to becoming an EDO. PER YEAR PER YEAR $500 $500 $20 $20 PER YEAR PER YEAR This membership is valued This membership is valued at $100, but is currently at $100, but is currently available for $20 per year. available for $20 per year. $100 $100 Groot draws on Aotearoa as a cautionary tale. A country often cited as a model for Indigenous rights has recently seen those relationships degraded under a more conservative government – proof, they say, that no gains are permanent. “As Indigenous peoples, you have to be vigilant. You can never simply leave it to the central government to support your initiatives,” they say. “We are used to operating ‘by the smell of an oily rag’ – we have to be geniuses, we have to be dynamic, and we have to be fluid.” Indigenous-led approaches to housing are not theoretical. They exist, and they work differently from the ground up. During our conversation, Groot points to an example visible from where I’m sitting: Sen' ák–w, the Squamish Nation’s landmark development on the south shore of False Creek in Vancouver, one of the largest Indigenous-led housing projects in Canadian history. It is, Groot notes, exactly the kind of initiative that rarely leads the coverage. “There are so many incredible examples of what is happening – and what could be happening,” they say. “Too often, Indigenous people are only invited to participate in planning at a superficial or tokenistic level. Being invited in a way that isn’t genuine can really damage our ability to respond to the issues impacting our communities.” Buhler First Aid Services Owner/Trainer Marge Buhler First Aid/Psychological First Aid, On-site Event First Response, Emergency Management Consulting, Sales of First Aid Products. Cell - 807-621-4286 Email - info@thunderbayfirstaid.ca Web - www.thunderbayfirstaid.ca Training Room - 1265 E Arthur St., 2nd Flr. Wisdom Boardroom, Thunder Bay, Ontario Traveling across Canada providing training with a strong focus on supporting Indigenous communities & organizations through First Aid & Emergency Management Training. DATA & VISIBILITY “There are constant debates aimed at narrowing the definition of homeless- ness,” Groot explains. “When you make the definition narrower, you ensure that a massive portion of the population is missed. You end up only seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ visible street homelessness, while overlooking people in transitional housing, women in refuges and those in short-term or emergency accommodation.” That narrowing also has political uses. “For Indigenous peoples, homelessness is an issue that is particularly vulnerable to political whims. Accountability at the government level often fails because there is a political incentive to hide or ignore the broader aspects of the crisis,” Groot says. For Indigenous women, housing insecurity rarely arrives alone. It travels with gender- based violence, child welfare involvement, economic precarity and a system that often cannot see the full shape of what is happening. In Aotearoa, a broader, national definition of homelessness has helped make some of that reality visible, counting women in refuges, prisons and precarious living situations that narrower frameworks miss. The result is a more honest picture – over half of the full-spec- trum homeless population, Groot notes, is comprised of women, many of them with children, but even that more complete accounting has limits. Sen' ák–w is what a genuine invitation looks like: a Nation-led vision built on Squamish land, designed on Squamish terms. The shift it represents changes what gets built, what gets funded and what gets measured. Fixing the data problem is a question of whose reality a system is designed to reflect. “If you put that bucket under a tap and run the water, you’re going to capture some of that critical need,” Groot notes. “But if you aren’t addressing the structural issues – the holes in the bucket – the water is just going to overspill. Resolution requires finding a pathway back home and a pathway back into community.” Sen' ák–w sits on land the Squamish Nation couldn’t legally represent itself on until the 1970s. Canada’s Indian Act barred their own lawyers until 1951. They couldn’t control their own membership until 1985. They fought through all of it, won the unceded land back and built an urban community at scale. “There is so much beauty and creativity there. They are people filled with laughter and love. They want to connect. They have so much to say and have survived so much,” Groot says. And until the systems built to support them are designed to see all of it, not just the roof, they will keep counting what is easy and missing what matters. •
View this content as a flipbook by clicking here.