Keith Martell helped nurture a fledgling bank for Indigenous people. As he retires, he’s seeing a solid base for the future – The Globe and Mail

April 24, 2023

In the early 1990s, a treaty land entitlement in Saskatchewan gave 25 First Nations access to about $400 million to buy land that had been promised to them but never given. All of a sudden, those First Nations became an economic entity, buying farmland, buying land in the cities. And that was different—historically, First Nations weren’t in business in a way that included capital. Also, people figured out that the non-Indigenous population was aging, and the Indigenous population was young. Those two things led to the creation of First Nations Bank of Canada—because we had some leverage both in the economy and in the labour market, and we needed a financial institution that operated for us, not for the landowner or the government or corporations.

Read More: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/rob-magazine/article-first-nations-bank-keith-martell/

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