By Bryan Eneas

Petit takes over as Beardy’s and Okemasis’ chief

Apr 2, 2017 | 4:00 PM

A new, but familiar face in the Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation has taken the top spot in the community.

After his first term in office as councillor, Claude Roy Petit, or Roy as he prefers, was elected as the chief in the Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation (BOFN) election of 2017.

“It was very emotional for me because my mother passed away in August… She told me and one of my aunties… that I should run for chief this coming term,” Petit said. “It wasn’t a big win. I think a lot of the campaigners… had a lot of good ideas.”

Petit became a councillor in the last leadership term of the BOFN chief and council. After being asked to run for the chief’s position by multiple people, he decided he would toss his name into the ring for the top job in BOFN.

“I think if I’m looking at the bigger picture, its like something was preparing me to be here,” Petit said. “It’s like everything that’s happening is like a puzzle coming together.”

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He said his previous experience as a life skills worker, a director of different organizations and a mediator, has given him the tools and preparation he needs to lead the Beardy’s community.

“I want to use my life skills background to understand how groups work and how to help my team work together,” Petit said. “We are all of us on the same page. We want to see certain things, I think it’s a shared vision the whole community has but has just never talked about.”

He said his experience as a director will help him in understanding grant application processes and how grant dollars are supposed to be spent.

Petit said his first term as a councillor gave him an understanding of how Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada funding works within an Indigenous community.

The newly elected chief is also a lodge-keeper within the BOFN community. He said he values the medicine wheel teachings about taking care of the spiritual, mental, physical and emotional well-being of self.

Petit is working with a slightly smaller council than past leaderships have had, but he isn’t letting it get him down. He said he feels as though the right people with the right skills for their respective roles have been put in place for success.

“I’d like to see us more focused on the development of our acts,” Petit said. “To be able to lobby the government for some of the things we don’t get to lobby for because we’re so caught up in some of the day-to-day business of the band.”

He said the new chief and council view themselves as a government entity who are asked to do things other government entities are not.

“We become kind of like the go-to people for any and every issue the band has, but that’s why you have directors, that’s why you have employees,” Petit said. “If we can create that kind of workforce and support them in their jobs [we] can concentrate on those lobbying pieces… then we’ll get to a better place.”

Housing a challenge facing the BOFN

Petit identified housing as a challenge he hopes to tackle within Beardy’s.

“We had a community development initiative that INAC did, just counting our numbers of people… We’re going to need about 150 houses by [2020 or 2030] and for the past decade we haven’t had any housing at all,” Petit said.

The $4.5 million in restitution monies withheld by the federal government from the BOFN for the band’s participation in the 1885 rebellion has been placed into a savings account where it will be used as collateral on loans to aide in the housing process. 

He said this process will allow BOFN’s restitution money to grow with interest “for the next seven generations.” It also allows BOFN to consolidate existing loans, which gives a lower interest rate for the band.

“We have to start operating more as a business and get away from just winging things as we go along,” Petit said. “There are emergencies that we have to deal with and stuff like that but there is a system we still have to follow.”

He said the subject of banishment has come up in numerous communities, and is something he and his fellow councillors are addressing. He said there are some fears about banishment which may come as a misunderstanding.

“I think there’s a misunderstanding of what it is,” Petit said. “The majority of us are not looking at banishment from the community – we’re looking at trying to get a handle on the drugs that are coming into the community.”

He said if the current council implements a banishment ruling, it will be a last-resort option to be excersized as the community as a whole. The new chief said he wants to do everything possible to help a person who may be straying down a path which would lead to banishment first.

“It’s got to be talked about anyways, we have got to do three readings of all of our acts and have a referendum anyway, but I think it’s a starting point,” Petit said.

Petit on economic development in BOFN

“If you’re a band that has nothing, if you don’t have oil or something like that on your property then you’re basically in deficit before you start,” Petit said. “We are as a people, basically able to adapt to anything they throw at us.”

Petit said he hopes to use the Treaty Land Entitlement process to acquire lands which would allow BOFN to build manufacturing plants which would create job opportunities for members. The Treaty Land Entitlement process allows bands who did not recieve their fair share of lands under treaty agreements to regain lost lands.

“Every company that I meet with, I always ask them about the possibility of manufacturing,” Petit said.

He’s also got aspirations to explore renewable energy. Petit said previous leadership had started the process to create a wind farm on the BOFN territory in partnership with a Quebec based company.

“The only thing that needs to be done on that is to be able to get a power purchase with the province, from Saskpower,” Petit said. “Once that’s in place we’ll be… looking at 50 towers and 150 megawatts at least of power generation.”

He said there has been seven or eight years of data collected so far. On top of a power purchase agreement, one environmental study needs to be completed.

There are plans to develop the Esso gas station on highway 11 owned by the band. Currently, the two pumps aren’t enough to handle the demand generated by the gas stations location between Prince Albert and Saskatoon – Petit said there are frequent line-ups for fuel.

Swearing in

The new chief and council will be sworn in on April 15, according to Petit, although the date remains tentative. He said the process hasn’t been undertaken over the last few leadership terms, but he hopes to change it for the new crop of leaders.

“We have an oath of office that we’re supposed to read,” Petit said. “I want to do that and do the whole ceremony and a thank-you feast for the community for giving us this opportunity, and I want to incorporate our culture into a lot of what we do.”

Petit said he hopes making the band office stable and healthy will have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the community.

“Just like if sickness trickles down, if we can create a healthy atmosphere then that will spread.”

Bryan.Eneas@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @BryanEneas