Living in northern Canada offers tremendous opportunities to learn, get involved and be a big part of your community. The In.Business program being in the north is a remarkable fit to helping make that happen.
Modern Treaty Territories (20 of the 24 Modern Treaties in Canada are located in the Northern region of Canada)
In.Business Northern Region’s students – First Nation communities and high schools represented in the 2016 In.Business program (on Google Maps)
If you are an Indigenous youth from or living in northern Canada, there are a tremendous amount of opportunities to learn, get involved, and be a big part of your community – which can dramatically improve your overall career options. And getting a post-secondary education in business can be a one of the biggest steps towards this.
The In.Business program being in the north has a remarkable fit; the explosion of opportunities in self-government, community economic development organizations, and corporate wealth creation entities are growing faster than the local area can fill. In.Business aims through mentorship in business and education to really support this areas local need in the encouragement of the developing of accountants, managers, corporate officers, and community economic developers just to name a few).
Yukon and Northwest Territories, while not experiencing significant growth in population (outside from the two Territory capitals, Whitehorse and Yellowknife), have grown increasingly more sophisticated in regionally based and community-based governance (called self-governance). These landmark agreements (called comprehensive land-claims agreements) provide communities the resources necessary to implement government services to the surrounding area and for the citizens of that First Nation. In essence, government is being re-invented from the ground up, to be administered by the very citizens that are reliant on such services. This means if you have some capacity to learn, there are an infinite supply of opportunities to be on the ground-floor of some of the most innovative public service entities in Canada.
Even more exciting are all the opportunities surrounding some of the business investments and economic development that also surrounds areas with comprehensive land-claims agreements. My First Nation for example, the Teslin Tlingit Council in southern Yukon, signed a self-government agreement in 1993 (which had dollars attached, as the government was buying land, kind of like a really complex real-estate deal). This money was invested in real-estate, the capital markets, and in various businesses as we learned investing diversely is important to deal with risk (i.e. if the markets bottom out, the whole portfolio will not collapse because “all the eggs were not in one basket”). My First Nation’s successes in finding and building positive business investments (up to 24 business all over Canada, with various investments all over the world) that provide continual returns has been well-known and have been incredibly exciting to be a part of.
To learn more about comprehensive land-claim agreements check out some of these resources:
https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100030577/1100100030578
http://www.landclaimscoalition.ca/modern-treaties/
https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100030607/1100100030608
Blair Hogan
Northern Regional Manager, In.Business