Our Service Area

Message from the Chief Executive Officer

Our Organizational Mandate:

"TO PROMOTE, INVEST, AND IMPLEMENT SUCCESSFUL CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVES, WHICH FOCUS ON FIRST NATIONS INDIVIDUALS WITHIN OUR SERVICE AREA."

Corporate Goal:

"TO ENHANCE RELEVANT AND MARKETABLE JOB SKILLS, WHICH LEADS TO SUSTAINABLE EMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH."

The Skeena Native Development Society (SNDS), in partnership with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), provides employment training, and service support to First Nation and Inuit peoples who normally reside in our Service Area.

SNDS offers advisory, planning, counseling, and funding resources on an individualized basis for skills and job market training and retraining, apprenticeship trades, employment readiness, and business start-up. These services are available in both the urban and rural areas.

The Directors of the Board are selected through local organizations in both the urban and rural areas and allows for representation at the Board level for policy making and corporate direction for the implementation of labour market strategies. SNDS services twenty-five villages and seven urban centers, with a total of about 60 organizations such as Village and Tribal Councils, Friendship Centers, societies of various types, and of course, the private sector. Approximately 64.5% of our People reside in the urban centers within the Northwest.

SNDS corporate objectives are:

"In our 2000 Labour Market Census, approximately 50% of those responding to the questions of, "what reason(s) do you give for the high unemployment in your village?" responded by stating that there wasn't enough government funding. This response raises some obvious alarm, especially as we apply a reality check on what drives a real economy. In short, a healthy economy is driven by market transactions that are free from political or command structure interference.

In our service area, there are only two tribal groups that have a relatively healthy market economy, as they compare to other tribal groups. These are the Gitksan with their involvement in the Forest sector, and the Haida (Skidegate) with their small business activity. While these market economies pale in comparison with the white side of the tracks, this type of economic activity is the first step toward self-sufficiency and self-reliance.

Strong or even fledgling market economies are not the norm in our world, so we continue to express high expectations with respect to publicly funded programming. These expectations reach deep into areas that Village Governments are not able to sustain, simply because they have no source of revenue to turn to. The federal government has so insidiously stamped their presence into every aspect of our lives that it is no wonder that almost our entire life cycle is based on the public purse. As with the response to the Labour Market Census question, there is a perception that if the government pours more money into programs, this will somehow "fix things" and there will be less unemployment, poverty, and social disorder. By the way, for the record, this mistaken perception does not restrict itself only to our side of the tracks, as this is a popular mainstay of the political philosophy of the left wing party platform.

Here's their rationale. Public funds are to be used for the purposes of providing goods or services. Because of this, these goods or services then become available to a broader base of people then if it were managed in another manner. The problem with this political ideology is that no where in the discussion is there mention of principles of sustainability, quality of programs, or choice of product. It's all about a distribution system that provides mediocre to third-world level service and products with no real freedom of choice, and by the way, forget about even mentioning the concept of sustainability. This political belief has bankrupted not just our public coffers in this and other provinces and countries, but has also bankrupted the basic human value of self-sufficiency and personal motivation and pride. "After all", goes their reasoning, "why look after yourself when we can do it better for you?"

If we, as a People, are to become successful in seeing "self-governance" or "self-sufficiency", we must walk away from the false belief that if the government simply pours money into the situation, it can create employment and sustainable economic activity. The political theory of providing goods or services to a greater mass of people (i.e., the distribution model) has absolutely no correlation to the [bad] economic principles of those politicians that drive a left of center agenda (e.g., led by the New Democrats and unions). Do we actually think that we are more intelligent then the other dozens of countries that have recently fallen into economic and social collapse due to this type of thinking? I don't think so, but unions are big and profitable business aren't they?

No, we are no more intelligent then any other group of people in this world who subscribed to the hopeless self-destructive principles of public dependency.

Economies that are based solely on the public purse are not based on reality. The citizens of those types of societies are simply "wards" of government. As my late uncle Chief Heber Maitland used to often say, [we are] "…nothing more then wards of the government who are looked after from cradle to grave. Our people can't even be born and die without government involvement and assistance! Indeed, we are servants in our own house!" His comment raises one last thought.

If we assume to simply mirror or reflect current governance structures based on the Indian Act, or worse, based on what federal bureaucrats believe is the wave of the day, we will continue to fail. The current principles of governance that the federal government has pushed our direction is not sustainable, creates too high a public expectation for our leadership to respond positively to, and makes the fatal assumption that with a simple name change here and there, the process will be better. Unfortunately, some of us are still duped into believing that the top-down command structure, without consideration of development or market driven economies, is the right one to use in managing our affairs. It is my hope that we work towards becoming masters in our own house, rather then acting out the servant role. To realise this, we must confront and eradicate those practices and beliefs that lead to dependency, and encourage the thinking and the practices that lead to a sustainable and self-reliant life style."

Clarence Nyce, Chief Executive Officer

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Jason Chelsberg (Gitksan)-Carpenter

The last time we featured Jason (in the January 2007 issue of our publication) he was completing his third year carpentry apprenticeship with Progressive Ventures. Jason had been employed with Progressive Ventures for one year when an opportunity to become a Journeyman presented itself through Skeena Native Development. Jason had experience in the field and soon discovered he was “born a carpenter”. Having started work in the bush at a young age, Jason says, “I was always a hard worker, I like to work…construction was better than working in the bush, and I was tired of chasing jobs.”

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