A Path to Prosperity for First Nations (Winnipeg)

Guest Speaker: Calvin Helin, Lawyer, Businessman and Author of Dances with Dependency

How can the lives of Canada’s indigenous peoples best be improved? Calvin Helin, a lawyer and the scion of a renowned family of native leaders in British Columbia, has delivered a timely shellshock to the defenders of the conventional approach to aboriginal policy with his book, Dances with Dependency. What we’ve created, he maintains, are fractured communities of leaders trapped by too much power and their people humbled and alienated by the standing in line for handouts. Helin warns us that a demographic tsunami is on the way, and offers as a solution a message of empowerment, a return to a 10,000-year tradition of self-reliance and pride.

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Click here to purchase Dances with Dependency

About the Guest:Calvin Helin is a member of the Tsimshian Nation from the northern B.C. community of Lax Kwalaams (Port Simpson). He is son of hereditary Chief, Smoogyit Nees Nuugan Noos (Barry Helin), of the Royal House of Gitlan and Sigyidmhanaa Su Dalx (Verna Helin), matron of the Royal House of Gitachngeek. Also a practicing lawyer and businessman, Helin is currently President of the Native Investment and Trade Association, formerly Vice-President of the National Aboriginal Business Association and Founding Director of the newly formed B.C. Oil & Gas Association. He was chosen as one of the top 40 under-40 entrepreneurs in British Columbia by the news publication, Business in Vancouver and selected for one of the top 40 under-40 national awards sponsored by the Financial Post Magazine and other major Canadian corporations. A leader of international trade missions to China and New Zealand, Helin is the author of Dances with Dependency: Indigenous Success through Self-Reliance and several other publications concerning law, aboriginal business and related issues.

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