Nuanced. - 86. Ellis Ross: Addressing Poverty in Indigenous Communities

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Aaron asks Ellis about his personal background, his thoughts on the role of Chief & Council, poverty in Indigenous communities, and his past interview on CTV Power Play. Ellis Ross was elected MLA for Skeena in 2017 and again in 2020. He currently serves as the Official Opposition Critic for Energy and LNG. Ross has previously served as the Official Opposition Critic for Environment and Climate Change Strategy, and Minister of Natural Gas Development and Minister Responsible for Housing. He has worked in both the private and public sectors, with business experience in hand logging, beach-combing, and construction.Ross worked full-time as a taxi boat operator until the Haisla Nation Council requested that he become their first full-time councillor. Ellis served in this position for eight years, from 2003 to 2011. In 2011, Ellis was elected Chief Councillor of the Haisla Nation and was re-elected by acclamation in 2013.Ross has been recognized as a business leader by both BC Business magazine and Canadian Business magazine. In 2012, Ross was appointed the inaugural chair of the Aboriginal Business and Investment Council. In 2014, he was the only First Nations leader among 25 Canadians invited by then-Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to attend a public policy and budget retreat. In recognition of his community service, Ross was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal in 2013 and the Order of B.C. in 2014. Ross actively enjoys golf, soccer, and basketball. He has a passion for seeing people succeed in athletics, school, and life, which drove his coaching style. One of the highlights of his career is coaching the Mount Elizabeth Secondary School senior girl’s basketball team to a zone championship. He is a proud father of two daughters and a proud grandfather.Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://aaronpete.substack.com/ Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Ellis Ross. I'm currently the MLA for Skeena. Previous to that, I was a chief counselor of Heisenation Council for six years, and I resigned from that position to run for MLA. And then prior to being chief counselor, I was a counselor, elected counselor, for eight years. And then prior to that, I was just a regular average Joe going from job to job. trying to raise a family, trying to make my way through life. So that's me in a nutshell.

Fascinating. Can you tell us what made you want to run for council in your community? I just got elected on recently into my community. And so I'm interested, what motivated that decision? What was kind of your ethos? I never wanted to run for council. That was the first thing for my mind. But when I got nominated, I wasn't there for the nomination. but I thought maybe I'll keep my name in,

and if I win, I'll take some of my council's vast resources and money and divert some of it toward my basketball teams that I was coaching. Didn't take me long to realize my council was so broke. They didn't have any money, and we're in such a bad deficit. There was a little chance of us bringing any money in, let alone trying to keep Canada from coming in and shut us down because we're so such a bad financial state. But that's basically why I got started.

And then as I learned more, I realized that there's more to counsel than what I thought I saw on the surface. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because seeing, I think I had a similar mindset, I went to law school and I thought I'd be able to just assist and be involved. And then I come in and realize that there's much more work to be done than initially expected. Our housing, was it a significant deficit, and it still is, and I have some solutions to it, but I'm interested, what was that like for you to see the challenges your community was facing? Where did you get elected, by the way? Chihuahawathal First Nation here near Hope, BC.

Oh, wow, okay, and how big is your band? 650 members. Total, and how many on reserve? About half of that, so around 300. Wow. Are you guys in treating negotiations? No. You're not in true negotiations, eh?

No. So do you guys have any economic development, or are you totally under the Indian Act funding agreements? Totally under the Indian Act still, but working on some economic development plans. We'd like to do a comprehensive community plan and get to work on growing our businesses. And this is actually part of the reason I wanted to have you on is I saw you on PowerPlay on CTV many years ago now. And I thought you made really important points that I don't hear a lot about, which is that many communities are open to the idea of natural gas lines, pipelines, in order to get our members out of poverty. And that is where my community is at. And it's a perspective I don't hear very often.

But it's an important one because it feels oftentimes that communities are forced to choose between poverty and the environment. And it's a difficult situation. And we don't place other municipalities or other communities in this predicament of choosing. one or the other. And so your insights were really important to me and kind of the philosophy I took to being on council. And how old are you, by the way? 26.

And you're in council? Yes. Wow, that is pretty young. And your band, how many percentage-wise would you say are living at the poverty level? All of them. Yeah. Oh, geez. Yeah, we have, I just, I took over housing portfolio, so for those who don't know, the housing portfolio is one of the most challenging, because our band is basically the landlord, where the insurers were responsible for maintenance, all of it.

And so in this, I had to do housing interviews for people to take on the homes, and we have four people living on a bed, five people living on a bed, and they have to sleep. They explain perpendicularly to the bed in order for everybody to fit. and these are issues that I'd like to address, but it's very discouraging to hear and it's very sobering to understand the real challenges that exist just because you live in this postal code and not that postal code, the challenges a person can face. And you know what's shocking about this

is that your story is common all across Canada for many First Nation reserves, and yet we're talking about a first world country like Canada. That is so shocked. And I was shocked when I got into council because I thought my predicament as a young man trying to find job, trying to find a career, trying to find anything to get me out of the cycle of welfare, job, unemployment insurance, welfare job, unemployment insurance. I thought I was the only one. And when I got into council, I realized, wow, there's a lot of us, not only my community, but on my band list, which people don't understand, there's a difference between community and bandlist. and then I found out this is happening all across Canada

and it took me a while to figure us out because Google wasn't around back then and I only had one computer in my office that was owned by the chief counselor so we ought to take turns using that computer there was no cell phones right there was no cell phones and we were so broke

we couldn't even afford more than one computer and like we were and we were living in an old residential school building that had been condemned 11 times for health reasons and our fire department didn't work. It was actually people that were living on welfare that were given

an extra 100 bucks a month. They signed out to be firemen, no training. The fire truck didn't work. All the equipment was outdated, didn't work. And on and on and on and on. And so when I got into council, I quickly realized, no, we're not a strong proud First Nation. In fact, of anything,

we're just living hand to mouth from the federal government's funding agreement. It's all we're doing. And so one of the first things they asked me to do was go to Ottawa. And I thought I was going to Ottawa to actually, you know, talk to government officials, you know, about, you know, some way to get out of our poverty. Well, I'll know, in fact, I was actually sent in that mission to talk to government officials, low-level government officials, mind you, and corporations about can they help us renovate the rec center? Can they help us renovate the council office? And when I realized that was part of my job to go and ask for money, I went back to my council and told him, nope, I'm not doing that anymore.

And so bit by bit. In fact, I'm going to give a speech here in like half an hour on my learning curve throughout the last 15 years in terms of perception versus reality. And that all started with council. And there's so many things that I realized that didn't work. In fact, of anything, at the end of it, I realized maybe after a couple of years, three years or so, after reading the rights and title of case law,

I realized, you know, our destiny is actually in our hands if we're willing to be brave, courageous, and bold, and take those arrows, take that abuse. Because if we really truly want change, the change is going to hurt. And it did. It hurt big time for my band. But after, like, by the time I became Chief Counsel, So we went from one of the brokest bands of BC to one of the wealthiest, most progressive. We had bought land, kept it in fee simple status, paid taxes.

Everybody was working. People were getting mortgages in their own right where nobody talked about Indian Act housing anymore. But throughout that painful process, for me, it was all learning reality versus perception. So you have an advantage. You're educated. So you have a vocabulary. You understand what words mean. you understand what terms mean, and you know how to put it all together.

I didn't have that. In fact, I bought a digital dictionary so I could look up words while we're sitting in actual meetings so I could understand what was going on, and I used it to read legal agreements. I used it to understand case law. So you're actually in a better position I was when I first got started. One of my questions for you is you go on to counsel, and a lot of people don't think about the people you need to work with, I've noticed already in my short time on council that there isn't someone necessarily standing in the way, but there's almost an acceptance of status quo, the way things are, things are moving

along, we're growing at a slow pace, and it's like, no, we need to revamp this whole system so that we can get people opportunities, because currently we have people who are like, oh, well, people will come to us with ideas on how to improve our community, and we'll just say yes or no. And everything I learned in law school was we need to actively say what we want, where we want to go, what best case scenario looks like, and how we'd like to get there and who could be involved in helping us get there. Changing that philosophy is challenging because people have accepted slow change and everything's going to move at a snail's pace. Was that something that was challenging for you? Big time. In fact, by a couple years into my first term,

I realized the Indian Act funding agreements were useless. And our portfolio system was based on the Indian Act funding agreements, like housing, community development, public works, finance. It was all based on the funding agreements. And so I slowly took myself out of all those portfolios and said, I'm not participating in that anymore. I'm not here to manage Indian Act programs, whether it be a portfolio or not. But that really meant I needed something else.

But you're talking about the mentality that's been ingrained into people. and it's it comes down to everything in terms of how they think they should be dealing with issues right down to the council structure and those people have been in that council table for last 10, 15 years, they can't think outside of that box and everybody wants independence right, everybody wants to change but as soon as you start to bring in that change everybody starts to push back and I the one old counselor told me you know when I was trying to change everything as chief counselor you told me because I was going to getting a lot of pushback. I had two years of pushback when I was chief. But the one old

chief, one old council told me, said, I understand what you're doing and you're doing the right thing. But this is always the way we've done things. And that's why I'm not supporting you. Simple as that. People were scared of change. But it took me two years to convince my community and my council to come down this new path that I was promoting. And I guaranteed them it would bring results. Two years it took me. By the time that we put in all these new changes, new mentality, by the way, new structure,

things just turned around overnight for us. It's just absolute overnight. No more, you know, people come to constantly say, hey, give me a house. Hey, give me a job. You know, hey, fix my doorknob on my house or, you know, stuff like that. No more of that.

And it was overnight. And it was remarkable. So I know exactly what you're talking about. In fact, this is part of the reason why I say a lot of First Nations, you know, that your future is in your hands. If you choose to change, because if you think government is going to fix your problems, you're sadly mistaken. If you think corporations are going to fix your problems, you're sadly mistaken. It's got to start from you as a First Nation member or a council member. One of your passions is helping coach people and show them and inspire them and support them in their development.

how did you approach that being on council and how has that affected kind of your approach in comparison to perhaps other leaders in your community because it seems like you want to build others up and not just give them things but give them the tools so they can succeed and be proud of the things they accomplish in their life. I did a lot of reading in my leadership experience and quite thankfully I actually passed academic English in high school And that helped me a lot. But when I got into council, leadership was always a topic. And I would always participate in these roles or responsibility workshops

and these other workshops regarding leadership. And I found them quite useless. And so as Chief Counsel, I put a stop to that. And I said, you know what? If you really, truly want to understand leadership, then you've got to come and follow me around. You've got to come to the meetings I'm taking. You've got to read the stuff I'm reading.

you've got to understand my perspective and you've got to understand how I get the community on board, how I get the council on board with these ideas. So I created a government-to-government working relationship committee. And the idea was, you know, that anybody joins my committee, you're going to just follow me around, read what I read, and you're going to learn how to be a leader. So if I get hit by a bus, you're ready to step in the next day.

The other thing I also did, I got rid of all the Indian Act portfolios and I put together an executive committee that oversaw the administration of Indian Act programming and their job was not to micromanage programs their job was to ensure the funny agreements were kept up were not exposed to liability that was their only job

and they weren't allowed to get down and say talk about who the next garbage man was going to be or should be by filing cap and that was not their job So when I formed that committee, I went down to that committee meeting, and I first held a confidential meeting with them. I told the chairman, and I told the committee members, you've got to pretend that you are the chief counselor. The buck stops with you.

None of these issues make it the council table anymore. You have full authority. And the only thing you do for council is you give us a bullet-by-bullet update in terms of the issues and how you resolve them. And there's no micromanaging. So I really encouraged everybody I had 10 counselors and I had a lot of managers

and a lot of staff and I encouraged everybody look you're there for a purpose you were hired for a purpose you're elected for a purpose have some faith in yourself and if you make a mistake even though you're trying to look out

for the better of our people I'll take the blame but if you make a good decision that benefits our people benefits our council benefits our future that credit's all yours. I'm going to stand back. I'm just going to let you take it all.

And so when people realize, you know, I'm not the guy just pointing your fingers and telling everybody what to do and everybody realized I expected something out of them, you know, the pride picked up. You know, people wanted to come to work. People wanted to accomplish things. And so that's really how I tried to, you know,

spread out the leadership roles amongst my organization. What did it mean to you to see the change happen over time to see your community improve. So I've worked as a native court worker, but to see that I can have a real impact on improving the quality of life for other people and supporting them and improving their own lives, it has a different impact on me than just assisting someone

through the legal system, knowing that we can get more funding, more support, improve programs. It means something to me personally to go to bed and know that we've improved things. What did that mean to you? No, pride's not the right word. It's not a big enough word.

Because, I'll give you two stories. One was, I was walking through the mall one day, and I came across one of my friends who was a single mom. And she asked me if I could help her with her job. I said, okay, what's the problem? I said, well, we're working six days a week, and we're working 12 hours a day. And can you do something about that? Okay, well, okay, who do you work for? What do you do?

And then I realized, she said, we used to work seven days a week. why did they take that one day a week away? And I was shocked. What, seven days a week? You want to work seven days? Yeah. And she said, think about it. I bought a van for my family.

I bought an iPad for my kids for Christmas. I'm going for vacation for Vancouver. For somebody in poverty, going to Vancouver for vacation is a big deal where other people say, oh, I'm going to Vegas. I'm going to France. I'm going to Mexico.

For people living in poverty, Vancouver or Edmonton Mall, you might as well be traveling a halfway across the world. So very proud to know that she didn't want counsel help, she didn't want welfare, she wanted more of the independence, she wanted more

in terms of making her own money. Another story was a friend of mine went to prison when he was 16 years old, got sent to Akala. And he didn't quite have a stable household to begin with. So I met him

over the years. He'd get out of jail, committed crime, go back to jail. Finally, when he was like 50 years old, he came to my office and said, hey, I really want to turn my life around, but nobody would give me a chance. And I said, yeah, okay, great, thanks for coming in, see you

later. A couple weeks later, he comes back in the game, and he says, you know, people are accusing me of stuff, and you know, nobody will give me a job. They even kicked me out of the elder center. And no, you know, what am I supposed to do? And I said, yeah, well, thanks for coming in, see you later.

You know, I'm busy. See you later. Third time he comes in. And he tells me, and I ask him, I said, okay, tell me, honestly, what are you feeling? Tell me, what are you feeling? So he broke down and started crying. He said, you know, I got sent to Calumra when I was 16. I was raped almost every day.

I was passed around amongst all the prisoners. I was beaten up by the guards. When I got out, I got beaten up by drug dealers. I got beaten up by everybody. And I went back to prison. I truly want to turn my life around. And so he's crying his eyes out. And so I told him right then and there, look, I'm going to help you.

But this is what I've been waiting for. I was waiting for you to show some accountability. I was waiting to see if you were being honest. Because you have ripped off a lot of people. You've done drugs. You've broken laws. You've committed crimes. You hurt a lot of people.

So I expect you, if I get you a job, I expect you to turn your life around. I expect you to be an upstanding citizen. Don't make a fool of me. So about a year later, he was still out of prison, and he came to me, and he told me about this. He said, oh, the company will work a four. They have operations all around BC, and they have Christmas there every year. And he said, this year, they said, okay, now it's time for the most valubial employer award. So they started describing this person

And they're talking about all across PC They started describing this person Oh this guy comes in early He's late He's always looking for things to do You know he's always trying to make the company So everybody's looking around And trying to figure out who it was

It was my friend And he was so proud And it was You know, I got people out of prison Where they keep coming out to tell me He said look I stayed out of prison I got a good job

I'm looking after my family You know thank you for all that And this is These stories are all over of my band. They're all over, the community members. And that actually what, I like the idea of my council being independent, independent. I like the idea that we don't have to beg for government money anymore. But seeing people turn their lives around or even getting off the right foot to begin with is I'm immensely proud of that. I can't describe how proud I feel about that.

Where do we find that balance? Because it's important to understand what's happened throughout history, the harms of Indian residential schools, the trauma people have been through due to that and the 60 scoop and different challenges we faced, but it seems like people can get stuck there. It seems like people can get stuck. We call it like a victim mentality, but there is a real need to process what you've been through so you can move forward. How did you find that balance? How do you look at that balance? I talked to a lot of both my parents went to residential school, by the way, and they actually raised seven kids who were independent, strong.

We had a strong family life. This all comes down to personal choice. And for those people that are talking about those old days, which were horrible, by the way, life was tough. Even before white contact, life was tough. You had to survive. But during the white contact era, you can't deny that the Indian Act

and government policies hurt natives even more. There was some good stuff. Steel was introduced to us. You know, in single homes, as opposed to a longhouse, electricity, diesel, fuel, there's a lot of good things. But at the end of all the day, the one thing I ask people, I say, okay, do you want your kids to live the way you did? Do you want your grandchildren to go through what you did? Do you want them to put up with that abuse or that social condition that you witness yourself or experience yourself?

Do you want that? And if the answer is no, you've got to change. You can't keep living in life. that. The ability to change, the matter of your native or not, the ability to change starts with yourself. And I encourage people to come to Kid in my village in my community and see the change. We no longer have house parties in my village. It's not because of the programs that council had that we gave up on years ago. It's not because for some reason people were making lots of money said, I want to do something else. I want to buy a house. I want to start a family.

I want to buy a truck. I want to do things. It's actually quite remarkable. And I always come back to that saying, you know, we've got to stop the cycle. Well, who are you talking about? Government? Government can't stop it. It's something like me, Ellis Ross, who is an alcoholic, said, I'm going to stop drinking.

That is how we stop the cycle. And then I'm going to teach my kids through my lessons why you shouldn't do what I did, why you should stay away from drugs, why you should go out and get an education, why you should go and get a job, why you should stay with from booze, that's how you stop the cycle. And I won't get into some of the darker issues that First Nations face as well, but it's the same concept. Yeah, it sounds like having that seven generations philosophy,

which is different than the do what makes you happy philosophy, which is very short-term and very short-lived, in my opinion. That interview you did, because it's how I discovered you and your philosophy, What was that like for you afterwards? Like that whole philosophy that you were kind of disagreeing with on CTV, that power play interview, where it was, it seemed all very theoretical. And you were bringing up real points about the crimes of poverty, the ideas you have on how communities can get out of it, and how to improve the quality of their life. How do you think about people who bring that philosophy to you? Because it's become even more prevalent, I think, since that interview.

And that person was unable to acknowledge or recognize many of the things indigenous communities face every single day. I have a great disdain for politics. I have a great disdain for rhetoric, especially if it's false rhetoric. And I'll say it again, the suffering of natives and Canada is a multi-billion dollar industry. This goes to academics, it goes to lawyers, consultants, government workers, politicians, Everybody makes a living of native poverty and the dependence. And I can't stand that. I hate it.

And I was taught never to say the word hate, but I hate this because the most disadvantaged people are actually being used for somebody else's purpose or agenda. And all you got to do is talk to one Aboriginal person that's maybe living on Hastings in Vancouver or maybe living on a street someplace. Ask them their story. and then compare it to these high-level speech

that these professors or these politicians are making and see that speech helps that person. And you'll find out, no, it doesn't. In fact, many of the people I talk to when they were trying to get out of prison or stay out of prison or trying to get out of welfare, not once did they mention reconciliation. Not once.

And even when I'm in my own family, I have white people in my family. cousins, aunts, uncles. Not once did we say, we've got to reconcile. There's a big difference between good politics that actually serves a purpose, which actually equates to leadership, versus the bad politics where certain politicians are just doing it for their own good. I mean, some of these people are making like $250,000 a year spouting off this rhetoric.

And nothing gets to be more angry than people, using poverty as an issue without trying to resolve it. And this goes for First Nations and Not First Nations alike. How do you square that? Because obviously you work as an MLA. You're trying to improve things. How do you square that? How did you make that decision to run?

And I do know that we have a few minutes left. I was Chief Counselor. And LNG Canada came and told me two weeks before they made an announcement that they were not going to announce a final investment decision. for their project. LG Canada was a $40 billion project. And it was one of the linchpins of our future as a community in the region.

We also had a number of other projects around that, but LG Canada was going to be the first project that guaranteed my band's independence. So when they told me they weren't going to go ahead with an investment decision, I fell into a really

deep funk. And so within the end, political parties had been asking me to run federally and provincially for the last five or six years prior so it took me a couple weeks to think about and I thought you know what I can't do any more as she found so I've done as much as I can I got to get to a higher level

and so I uh I told everybody I'm going to I'm going to run for Emily and I'm going to try to see if I can help the B Cid liberals approve LNG projects in BC and that's that's basically why I did it that's why I resigned I mean, I could have been Chief Counsel for a long time. In fact, my council, when they found out that I was going to run for MLA, they offered me a $50,000 pay raise. They gave me a $50,000 pay raise, and I turned it down.

I told them, it's not about the money. This is something bigger. I want to build up a strong region, strong communities, strong band members, strong community members in the non-native communities. I want to build up, you know, a strong economy, which in turn has benefits. So that's why I ran for Emily. Can you just give some words of advice for individuals trying to improve the circumstances of their community? What would you say to those people who are maybe in your circumstance when you were just getting on to counsel?

You're fresh. You don't know a lot, but you want to improve things. Do you have any advice for people in those circumstances? Well, at the end of the rights and title is your biggest tool, especially when companies want to come in and do something in your territory. If you don't have any types of projects on the books, anything going, then you're going going to have to think about, you know, what do I want to develop? Do I want to develop a technology economy, resource economy, forestry economy, there's a whole

power of range of things you can do. But at the end of the day, you really got to understand what is it that you want as a leader? as a council as a community as band membership what do you really want because if you're if you're okay with your your poverty levels you're okay with your kids not having a job having no future then fine great but if you truly want independence and you want success for your kids then you're really going to have to take a good look in the mirror and you're going to have to do some things and say some things that you don't like it's not going to be easy with what do you want?

If you can answer that, then you can go to the next step. How do I get it? And that how is going to be really hard, really hard. You're going to go through some pain. You can go through some grief, stress. But at the end of the day, you know, at the end of the day,

if you succeed or not, you can say, you know, I stood up for principle. I did everything I could to actually make a change. So either way, I feel good about myself, as opposed to saying, yeah, I've been a leader for like 20 years and I made, you know, 100 grand a year. I'm happy. That's, that doesn't have any substance for me. What I like to see is people succeeding. That's incredible. I really appreciate you being willing to sit down and do this interview. I know you have another place to be, but I really felt it was important to sit down with you. You were one of my inspirations when running for counsel for my community. That interview, I still show people today. because I think it's a voice that we don't hear enough. So I really appreciate you being willing to take the time,

and I hope to connect in the future. I'll tell you what, let's keep in touch. And I do drive to Vancouver once in a while, so I'll let you know. Send me your contact details. I'll let you know. I'd love to visit your community someday. Sounds good.

I would be honored. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day. You too. See you later. Thank you.