I just want to thank the community for our community meeting. It was a long time coming and we apologize for leaving it so long. I thank you for the challenges and I am thankful that you are interested in your community. It is good to challenge the system as that is one of our checks and balances. Challenge with the solution is the best. So thank you to those who challenge the system. We hope that we do not keep our community meetings too long in the future.

As you may have noticed, I have not been at the office as much as I used to be. As our projects get closer to starting, it is important to meet with people who have a stake in it, such as funders, engineers, architects, and us. We have also met with Ministers of the Province such as Aboriginal Affairs and Sustainable Resources.

As the community knows, we have a number of programs that work with clients to land issues. We are in the midst of not only building projects and businesses but also with land transactions and policies. Meeting with the Ministers had to do with protection and preserving our cultural artifacts, graves, and ceremonial grounds which sometimes means purchasing the lands that house them and informing the Ministers of our disdain of the land use framework, which will be intrusive to our rights within our treaties.

Then, not only are those meetings with Ministers and legislation requiring our presence and decisions, we have to deal with everyday services that see us amalgamating services and building policies to those integrative programs. With this type of continuous changes, sometimes, I think about what our Leaders must learn and know in order to govern, preserve, protect, and defend our Treaty rights, culture, and lands. They need to know their cultural background, to communicate, and discern their advisory services. As their manager, I am amazed at what we have to know in such a short period. The best thing is to know two sets of knowledge bases; our own and theirs.

Sometimes, we do not always respect our Leaders, supervisors, or managers as employees or staff or even youth or community members. It is difficult to think beyond our own lives and the decisions that impact us. The Leadership must take into consideration the general population and make decisions that will impact them. More importantly, the Leadership must challenge the overall governing body that impacts them especially in their effort to govern their community. Therefore, as parents make decisions that impact the children, the governing body makes decisions that impact the majority of the community and it is up to us how we stand at the plate. We stand at the plate, ready for the pitch or we watch the pitch and it passes us by. Our decisions impact us and we need to take responsibility for our decisions.

Generally, April has been a month of preparation for the projects, the policies, the businesses and the preservation and protection of our cultural artifacts, the month of May will, hopefully, produce the funds to put the plans in place and start the process of economic sustainability and bring the much needed long term employment to our community. Ultimately, that is what the leadership is working towards!

Communication is the key to our success and learning, so read for yourselves, your gookum, moshoom and your children! Newsletters can be obtained at the reception desk usually around the first week of the month! Please submit to your newsletter, do not be shy, we know you have a lot of positive and new things to say!!! Thank you.

Respectfully, Beatrice Carpentier, O’Chiese Band Manager