Regional chief looks to grassroots for collective strength

A month after his election as Ontario Regional Chief, Isadore Day Wiindawtegowinini offered tobacco at the sacred fire burning at the Mississaugas of New Credit Cultural Village set up at Toronto’s Fort York as part of the 2015 Pan Am Games. He also visited the Aboriginal Pavilion where he agreed to an interview to talk about his priorities for his three-year term of office.

As the regional chief, Day is a member of Assembly of First Nations’ national executive and the chair of the political confederacy for the Chiefs of Ontario. The Chiefs of Ontario functions as a political forum and secretariat for 133 First Nations, which includes the Anishinabek, Mushkegowuk, Onkwehonwe and Lenape peoples.

“The biggest change we need to advance our people is to mobilize our people,” he said. “All our people. Not just the ones
that have education and are in the most favourable position to succeed, but everybody.”

One of the biggest challenges, said Day, is to be able to engage the grassroots. “We’re blessed as First Nations leaders to have such a strong grassroots movement at this time in our history,” he said, “and that is one of the strengths that is going to help our people move from our current oppressed condition to rising above and really seeing nationhood take over this country.”

As chief of Serpent River First Nation for 10 years, Day made a point of seeking opinions and direction from the membership – the people most affected by the many issues facing First Nations people.

He’ll continue the practice of engaging people, he said, and he’ll help local leaders build networks comprised of the diversity
of people that make up First Nations communities with their differing talents, skills, educational levels and economic circumstances. It is the most vulnerable people who get left behind, he said, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the remote north.

“I’m spending a lot more time in the remote north than previous regional chiefs,” he said, “and I’m finding it’s like that
old cliché. Out of sight, out of mind.” The high cost of transportation, health care, food creates a situation, said Day, “where so many of our people get left behind.” Addressing this inequity “has to be a major focus of my work as [regional chief],” he said.

While some chiefs might be afraid to share the leadership role with the community, Day himself has no such fears. “There’s so much work to do that we need to share and the community often knows better than we do,” he said.

First Nations need to make a shift in the way they work, said Day, in order to make full use of the talents and commitment in the community. “As First Nation leaders, we only have the same level of capacity as the next person. We have to build the collective strength. We’ve somehow been fooled into believing that the hierarchical system, that the top-down system is the one we need to design and become experts at. That’s totally wrong. That’s what’s gotten our people into so much trouble. For us, it’s the circle. It’s actually being able to see all humanity at an eye level and to say, ‘Listen, I got a different role here and you’ve got a different role that’s important to me. I can share with you and you can share with me and we can work together to help that other person’.”

Protecting the land and the water has to be the number one priority, Day said, in order to secure and maintain a future for our children. “We cannot allow ourselves to get pulled into a discussion or decisions on pipelines solely based on economic grounds. The pipeline economy is a scary one. When bitumen spills into the environment, it destroys. It creates havoc on the biosphere and there’s no turning back from it. I think about fish. If a fish can’t breathe in the water, eventually what’s going to happen to us is we’re not going to be able to breathe. We, as Indigenous people at this time in our history, have to stand up and we have to be very committed and we have to be very dedicated to our value systems.” We can’t depend on other governments to protect the environment for us, he said, to ensure that our people and their children and grandchildren can continue living off the land.

At the Assembly of First Nations, Day plans to take forward a strong voice on behalf of Ontario First Nations. That’s been
missing for a long time, he said.

“The Ontario First Nations have told me, we have to be visible, we have to be vocal, we have to be respectful, we have to be strategic about our positioning.”