The NICE approach to managing First Nation wealth – Financial Post

April 7, 2014

A three-day forum on Understanding Indian Trust Funds hosted last week by the National Indigenous Council of Elders (NICE) highlighted a real desire for change among First Nation leaders, with the primary goal of reclaiming control over their people’s future.

The event, which featured regional grand chiefs, chiefs and counsel and elders among First Nation’s communities across Western Canada, showed NICE is taking a lead-by-example approach in identifying the changes needed to be made and following up with actionable solutions.

As a guest speaker, my presentation, “A new approach to multi-generational community planning,” addressed a few of these issues while identifying a potential solution to the status quo, which is clearly not working.

Specifically, while many First Nations communities have established or are about to establish large trusts using new settlement funds, many of the members of these communities have not benefited from these settlements primarily because of the way they are structured and being managed.