John Bernard featured in New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal
John Bernard was called a traitor when he left the Madawaska Maliseet First Nation reserve near Edmundston.
When he started winning awards and gaining recognition for being president and CEO of his Ottawa-based aboriginal information technology company Donna Cona Inc., he found himself running into more and more aboriginals who - because of his corporate success - called him "white."
Bernard, who last week picked up his latest award as Atlantic entrepreneur of the year from the Atlantic Canada Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Awards, said: "That really burns me. That's coming from our own aboriginal society.
"We need our own people to say, 'listen, it's OK to succeed, it's okay to get ahead "...' [There's a] stigma that the moment you start succeeding and making money, you're not aboriginal anymore. You're a white man."
According to Bernard, he moved to Ottawa to find the clients and resources his company would need. But Bernard hasn't forgotten his aboriginal roots.
Forty per cent of the 68 employees at Donna Cona's Vancouver and Ottawa offices are aboriginals and Bernard maintains more than 80-per-cent ownership of the company, making it Canada's largest aboriginal-owned professional service company. Bernard said he makes a concerted effort to give back to the community from which he came through sponsoring organizations such as the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation.
"It's pretty hard to find IT aboriginals," he admitted. "I would rather be measured based on the amount I give back to my community than the number of aboriginals I hire, because indirectly aboriginals get hired because of the support we give.
"If I could just convince other aboriginal companies to do that, it would be a huge win-win for all of us."
Eventually, Bernard said, he hopes to move into the Atlantic region, and possibly open a company on a reserve. But for the time being he has been focused on Donna Cona and the founding with partner John Kim Bell of its spin- off company Bell and Bernard Ltd. - a consulting firm located on Ontario's Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, which will specialize in developing relationships between aboriginal communities, industry, and government.
Originally from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake near Montreal, Kim Bell, the president of Bell and Bernard, said aboriginal communities suffer from a "cultural lag" that means the forces of globalization does not affect them because they do not participate in major economic systems.
"If we had been allowed to live with other Canadians, we would have evolved in the same way," Kim Bell said. "If you want to be an entrepreneur, you're going to have to go where there's a market - and that's generally not on a reserve."
He said until recently social concerns such as health problems, poverty and crime have kept aboriginal communities from focusing on economic development.
"Communities have to be more self-reliant and they need to have an economic engine - that's the reality of the world," Kim Bell said. "Should natives get in to business? Of course. Everyone else is doing it - that's what humanity does."
We need more people who are entrepreneurs and can participate in the economy. Unfortunately, instead of embracing them, we sort of banish them."
Kim Bell, a Gemini award-winning conductor and pianist as well as entrepreneur and philanthropist - he founded the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation in 1993 - said aboriginal businesspeople like Bernard set a good example by leaving reserves to pursue business interests, because they give back to their homes.
Bernard said he's skeptical of the seeming emphasis on government-funded social services when it comes to maintaining and developing aboriginal communities.
"I strongly believe in economic development," Bernard said. "We should be begging money for economic development initiatives so we can make our own money.
"If you visit them throughout Canada, it's the socialist system. It doesn't work."
Anna Molley
Donna Cona Inc.
13th floor - 130 Slater Street
Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 6E2
Telephone: 613. 234. 5407
Facsimile: 613. 234. 7761
E-mail: annamolley@donnacona.com
Visit: www.donnacona.com