Indigenous students get boost from program

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/11/2023 (751 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A year ago, Kendra Bouchie, a mother of four from Minegoziibe Anishinabe (formerly Pine Creek First Nation), attended the inaugural Indigenous job fair organized by the Business Council of Manitoba (BCM).

Since 2001 the BCM — whose membership includes the largest employers in the province — has provided $3,000 cash awards to Indigenous students attending one of 12 accredited post-secondary institutions in the province. In the past two decades the BCM’s Indigenous Education Awards program has handed out close to 3,000 awards totalling about $8 million to more than 1,500 students (many have received the award in multiple years).

The cash helps alleviate the financial stress students experience. Many recipients said they didn’t know if they could have continued their education without the award.

Last year, with assistance from PrairiesCan, the BCM expanded the award program to include an employment component, called Work Integrated Learning, where BCM members proactively seek to hire student award recipients for summer jobs or some kind of work experience.

Like many first-time programs, at last year’s job fair there were almost as many employers as there were students and fewer than a dozen were hired.

Bouchie was one of them.

But she didn’t paper the room with her resumé. She knew where she wanted to work and only gave her resumé to one employer — the Business Council itself.

She’s now the manager of the BCM’s Indigenous Education Awards program and will start law school at the University of Manitoba next year.

“I faced countless barriers that I had to overcome,” she said. “I’m going to school to remove those barriers so my kids can walk into a building and be treated right so they don’t have to face those same barriers.”

She wanted to work with the BCM to be able to play a role in easing the way for other Indigenous youth in the education system.

“We’re here to foster equal opportunities for everyone,” she said.

Logan Mason, 21, from St. Theresa Point also got hired last year with Transcona Roofing (which is famously owned by Richard Marchetti, a Métis entrepreneur who received an education award himself from the BCM 20 years ago).

Mason is in his third year at the Asper School majoring in accounting. He’s working towards his CPA designation with his sights set not on a career at PricewaterhouseCoopers or one of the big accounting firms, but to use his skills to help his community.

“I love it there,” he said. “I want to be able to support my community.”

About 40 businesses — as well as a couple of social service agencies and the 38th Canadian Brigade Group — were there meeting the students. Some of them even had their CEOs on hand — including Ash Modha from Mondetta, John Bockstael from Bockstael Construction, Todd Burns from Cypher Environmental and Terry Brown from Okimaw Community & HR Solutions.

Even though it was the night before his government’s first Throne speech, Premier Wab Kinew attended the event… and stayed for some time.

Speaking without notes, Kinew uttered a phrase that was repeated by others — “Education is the new buffalo” — noting the importance education can have in the lives of Indigenous people in Manitoba as a tool to put food on the table and a roof over one’s head.

(After he spoke, Kinew spent some time in the room as a long queue quickly formed in front of him with many of the 200 or so students in attendance wanting to shake hands and take a selfie with the country’s first ever Indigenous premier.)

Kinew made a point of explaining to the students about who the Business Council of Manitoba was and how they were committed to making the province a better place for the next generation.

He joked about how Indigenous communities celebrate hockey players and powwow dancers.

“We need to celebrate our community members who achieve in education and achieve in business. That will be absolutely critical to the success of Indigenous people in the coming decades,” he said. “It will be absolutely critical to the success of the entire province in the coming days.”

In the past the province has contributed 50 cents on every dollar the BCM members raised for the Indigenous Education Awards program.

At the event he said his new government is already working on upping that to match the BCM members’ contributions dollar for dollar. Last year that was $400,000.

This year the goal is to place 80 students in positions at BCM companies this year through the Work Integrated Learning program.

Looking around the room, Brown, the CEO of Okimaw Community & HR Solutions and one of the few Indigenous members of the BCM, said seeing the difference in attendance between last year and this year, it’s not hard to imagine that those numbers could get much higher much more quickly.

Bram Strain, the CEO of the Business Council, said despite the best intentions, many of them are still learning what they need to learn.

“We need to understand,” he said. “We’re learning as we go. We can be well-intentioned and it could still go sideways. That’s why support from our own Indigenous members is super important.”

During her remarks to the attendees, Bouchie told the students that they can trust the businesses that were there.

“I know your potential just as the Business Council knew mine,” she said. “I need you to try to trust. The Business Council lives by its mission to make Manitoba a preferred place to live, work and invest… for everyone, including all of you. Everyone here has the best intentions for you and they want to help you all succeed. You need to trust yourself. If I can do it you can too.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca