Order of Excellence recognizes public service

Page 9

When Chester Cunningham received a phone call from Alberta's Lt. Gov. Lois Hole earlier this year, he thought the gardening expert was calling to ask him how his strawberry plants were faring. Instead, she informed him he would be receiving one of this year's Alberta Order of Excellence awards.

"I really didn't expect it, but it was a real pleasant and humbling surprise," Cunningham said.

The formal investiture ceremony was at Government House Oct. 19.

Cunningham is probably best known as the founder of Native Court Worker Services, which later became Native Counselling Services of Alberta. The organization, which has helped people across Alberta negotiate the intimidating judicial system, recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

The formation of Native Counselling Services began while Cunningham was working as a program director for the Native Canadian Friendship Centre in Edmonton. He noticed that people came into the friendship centre around 11 a.m. each day from the court house.

"So I went down there and took a look. . . . They were putting four of them in the docket, asking their names, reading the charges, accepting a plea-and never any verbal communication. It was always a nod of the head, and they were being sentenced," Cunningham explained.

"I asked three of the judges if I could have lunch with them, and see what I could do to help the courts with all the Native people," he said

The judges were quite receptive. One judge told Cunningham he would like to get more information on the background and the charges against people appearing before him so he could mete out the proper sentence.

The next morning a woman from Calling Lake apeared in court.

"She didn't look at anybody. She just looked at her feet," Cunningham recalled. He asked the judge if he could talk to her.

Cunningham interviewed her, then presented her case to the judge. The charges against her were dropped.

"And my career started as a courtworker," Cunningham said.

Soon he had the job title of courtworker added to that of program director at the friendship centre, and later he moved up from program director to executive director.

But he resigned from the centre in 1969 when the board said he couldn't set up outreach centres for courtworkers because the friendship centre operated within the boundaries of Edmonton.

In 1970, he set up the Native Courtworker program with four courtworkers.

Cunningham worked on the front lines at Native Counselling for the first six years, although he never passed up an opportunity to return to court.

"I didn't like the office, so if I got a chance to go somewhere to court I would go. Anywhere we didn't have a courtworker."

After five years of operation, Native Counselling saw the number of Aboriginal inmates in provincial prisons decrease from 56 per cent to 28 per cent. The main reason, Cunningham said, was the people trained as Native courtworkers.

"Some of them were former clients."

Since retiring in 1996, Cunningham has remained with the Law Enforcement Review Board, which he was appointed to nine years ago, as well as on the Provincial Judicial Selection Committee, to which he was recently appointed. He also recently worked with the solicitor general's office on a parole board policy review.