Indigenous Leadership is A State of Becoming

Values, Purpose, and where I want to be.

I first learned Indigenous leadership not from Chief and Council, not from a political speech, and not from a title. I learned it from my Auntie Lynn.

She was the pharmacy manager at Norway House Cree Nation Pharmacy. She was stern, smart, caring, and grounded. She had a way of understanding people from the bottom up. When I worked there, she made sure people were okay. She made sure I was okay. She was not my mother, but she played an important role in my life and motherly role in my early life. She was a strong matriarch.

When I think about leadership, I think about her. Not because she stood behind a podium or held political office, but because she showed up. She cared. She had standards. She held responsibility. She made people feel seen while still expecting them to do better. That, to me, is Indigenous leadership.

It is not a title. It is not a position. It is not something that only exists in elected office, boardrooms, or formal roles. Indigenous leadership is a state of becoming. It is trying to be better than who you were yesterday. It is learning, growing, healing, showing up, and helping others find their way too.

A Title Can Give You Authority, But It Cannot Give You Character

One of the biggest mistakes we make is confusing leadership with title. A Chief can be a leader. A Councillor can be a leader. A director, manager, board chair, or CEO can be a leader. But the title itself does not make them one.

A person can hold power and still not lead well. A person can have authority and still lack humility, care, accountability, or vision. That is an uncomfortable truth, but it is one we need to be honest about. At the same time, someone can have no title at all and still be a leader.

A teenager making sure their friends are safe and heard can be a leader. An artist creating space for Indigenous expression can be a leader. A business owner opening doors for others can be a leader. A person in recovery who shows someone else that life can get better can be a leader.

Leadership is not always loud. It is not always public. It does not always come with recognition. Sometimes being a leader is simply being the person who shows up.

Leadership Is a State of Becoming

To me, Indigenous leadership is about becoming.

It is not about pretending to have every answer. It is not about acting like you have already arrived. It is about being willing to learn, change, grow, and become better than you were the day before.

That matters because leadership should not require perfection. Our communities do not need perfect leaders. We need honest ones. Grounded ones. People who are willing to be accountable. People who can admit when they are wrong. People who are still learning and do not hide that fact behind ego.

Leadership comes with responsibility. It comes with pressure. It can be thankless. There will be people who may never thank you, never understand what you carried, and never see the full weight of the decisions you had to make.

But being a leader should not destroy you.

Service does not mean self-abandonment. Protecting your community also means learning how to protect yourself. If you burn yourself out trying to be everything to everyone, eventually there is nothing left to give. And then everyone stands around shocked, as if human beings are somehow not affected by exhaustion. Incredible discovery, apparently.

Real Leaders Do Not Hoard Knowledge

Unhealthy leadership often shows up through knowledge gatekeeping.

I have seen departments where only one person knew what was going on. Everyone else was left depending on that person for information, direction, and decisions. That is not leadership, but dependency. When one person holds all the knowledge, the whole team becomes weaker.

Indigenous people are storytellers. We share knowledge. We teach through experience, story, observation, and relationship. Leadership should reflect that. A good leader does not hoard information to feel important. A good leader shares what they know so other people can grow.

Mentorship is one of the most important parts of leadership. If you are not helping someone else learn, prepare, or step into their own gifts, then what are you actually building?

Real leadership creates capacity. It does not create dependence.

Good Leadership Opens Doors

A good leader communicates. A good leader is transparent. A good leader stays humble and admits when they make mistakes.

But more than that, a good leader brings people into the room.

Wherever I exist, I think about who else I can bring in so they can exist there too. That is a big part of how I understand leadership. It is not enough to be the only Indigenous person in the room, the only young person in the room, the only person with lived experience in the room, or the only person who figured out how to get through the door.

Leadership asks: who else should be here?

I think about people like Jimmy Thunder, who took a risk on hiring me as an Economic Development Officer. At the time, I had seven years of pharmacy experience and some business school behind me, but I did not have all the answers. He gave a random guy a chance, and that chance changed the direction of my life.

Now, I am devoting my life to Indigenous economic and community development.

That is what leadership can do. It can see potential before it is fully formed. It can make space for someone who may not have the perfect résumé but has the heart, drive, and willingness to learn.

Sometimes the greatest reward comes from taking a chance on someone.

Indigenous Leadership Exists Everywhere

We also need to expand how we see Indigenous leadership.

It is not only political. It is not only administrative. It is not only tied to Chief and Council.

Indigenous leadership exists in music, art, business, education, recovery spaces, food sovereignty, language & cultural revitalization, entrepreneurship, and community work.

I think about people like Tina Keeper. Seeing an Indigenous woman on North of 60 mattered. It showed that our people could exist in spaces where we were not always seen.

I think about Indigenous creatives like Alyssia Sutherland (AR Productions) entering places like Milan, Tokyo, and New York. Entering these international stages, and industries that were not built with us in mind. That kind of visibility matters. It shows the next generation that they can go further than what they may have imagined.

Sometimes leadership is not giving a speech. Sometimes leadership is standing in a place where your people were not expected to be and making it easier for the next person to imagine themselves there.

The Future Needs Youth Mentors

If I think about the kind of Indigenous leaders the future needs, I come back to youth mentorship.

Youth mentors can create builders. They can create systems thinkers. They can create cultural leaders. They can create economic powerhouses. They can create food sovereignty leaders, recovery leaders, sobriety leaders, even maybe emotionally mature adults! People who know how to care for others because someone once cared for them.

When someone nurtures the youth, it creates a cascade effect.

And yes, some youth may act like little shitheads. Let’s not clutch our pearls like we haven’t met teenagers before. But often, that behaviour comes from not having someone consistent to look up to. Not having someone take them under their wing. Not having someone show them that they matter before they have everything figured out.

Mentorship can change that.

I think about my mentor, Ashley Richard. She is someone I deeply value and admire. She represents the kind of person and leader I want to become. Her saying yes to mentoring me matters more than she may even realize.

That is leadership too.

Not just being successful, but helping someone else see that they can become something more.

Healing Is Part of Leadership

Healing plays a major role in leadership.

I do not believe a person can lead effectively or authentically while completely ignoring their own trauma. That does not mean leaders need to be fully healed before they lead. If that were the rule, we would have no leaders, just a very quiet room full of people pretending they are fine.

But there is a difference between having lived experience and projecting unresolved pain onto the people you lead.

I know who I was when I was in active addiction. I know who I am today. And I cannot imagine being a healthy manager back then in the way I am learning to be now. This is not shame but honesty.

Healing gives us better ways to cope. It helps us respond instead of react. It helps us understand people as human beings instead of turning them into reflections of our own past.

For example, if someone comes to work hungover once, I do not get to automatically label them an alcoholic because that was part of my story. But if it becomes a pattern, then leadership means having a real conversation with care, honesty, and responsibility.

That is the line.

Lived experience can make us compassionate. Unhealed projection can make us harmful.

Indigenous leadership needs people who are willing to look at themselves honestly. People who are willing to heal, not just for themselves, but for the circles they are part of.

Trust Takes Years to Build and One Post to Break

Trust is fragile.

It can take years to build and one post to break.

I have seen how quickly trust can fall apart when leadership communicates poorly, reacts publicly, lacks transparency, or turns frustration toward its own people. Once community members feel disrespected or left in the dark, the damage can be deep.

When leadership does not communicate clearly, people fill the silence with guesses. Then the guesses become rumours. Then the rumours become Facebook arguments. Then suddenly everyone is angry, confused, and blaming each other while the actual issue gets buried under chaos.

This is why transparency matters.

People may not always agree with a decision, but they deserve to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and how it affects them. Communication is not just a nice extra. It is part of accountability.

Leadership without trust becomes politics. Leadership with trust becomes nation-building.

We Need Leaders Who Build Beyond Themselves

The future of Indigenous leadership depends on people who are willing to build beyond themselves.

We need leaders who share knowledge. Leaders who mentor. Leaders who communicate. Leaders who heal. Leaders who bring people into the room. Leaders who understand that their role is not to be the only one with answers, but to help create more people who can carry the work forward.

We need leaders in governance, yes. But we also need leaders in art, food systems, business, education, recovery, language, culture, technology, and community development. (I am missing a lot but this comes to my mind, what comes into your mind when you think of future leaders we need more of?)

We need people who can honour culture and still build systems. People who can love their community without losing themselves completely inside the work.

Most of all, we need leaders who understand that becoming better is part of the responsibility.

To Young Indigenous People

If you are a young Indigenous person reading this, I want you to remain hopeful.

Find a mentor. Be patient with yourself. Life may not get better in a day, or even a couple of months. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes therapy. Sometimes it takes rehab. Sometimes it takes losing yourself and fighting like hell to come back (this is literally what it took for me to be here).

It took me years to get to where I am. It took healing. It took understanding who I am, what I value, and where my purpose exists.

But there is life on the other side.

A bad day is not the end of the world. A hard season is not the end of your story. You can become who you want to become, even if you are not there yet.

Leadership is not about being perfect. It is about becoming. It is about showing up. It is about learning from where you have been and choosing to do better with what you now know.

And maybe, if we do this right, we create a ripple effect. We mentor the next ones. We open doors. We make the path a little clearer. We help a few little shitheads become grounded, caring, powerful Indigenous leaders in their own right.

We are the change.

Not someday… but now.