Edith Moore

By Edith Moore, NmTC Communications Liaison

On February 8-9, through the snowstorm, a brilliant workshop was delivered on post-election leadership training by the Naut’sa mawt Tribal Council team, along with Laara Mixon of Carden Consulting. Thank you to the Songhees Nation for allowing us to host this on your traditional territory.

Our member nations and the board of directors defined this training as a need and NmTC met the need with this outstanding, well-developed workshop.

On so many levels I was pleased to be invited to attend the workshop, both as a Halalt community member and also as part of the NmTC team.

The workshop was specifically designed to train our leaders and future leaders as they take on the roles and responsibilities of chief and council. The goal was to develop relevant training that meet the needs of our NmTC member nations and improve the governing capacity of their leadership.

This was on point with what our members were asking for and truly met this need. Our nations have one thing in common, which is that our leaders are people who stand up for their communities to be a chief or councillor because of their heart and passion.

Once those members are elected, a huge amount of learning has to begin to carry forward the needs of the community. Now we have training specifically designed to make sure they are better equipped to do this important job.

Here are just a few of the topics that were covered during the training:

• Characteristics of a good leader
• Principles of negotiation
• How to contract and manage professionals
• Planning, designing and monitoring outcomes for leaders
• Indigenous community engagement processes
• Inherent rights and responsibilities
• Financial management and budgeting processes
• Indian Act and how it applies

This workshop was filmed, so that the footage can be used to support future on-line training.  This will maximize the flexibility of the program and allow for learning at one’s own pace.  This is brilliant for meeting the needs of everyone, so if travel is a barrier for anyone then this is the answer.

I would highly recommend this training and hope that one day it will be a pre-requisite to becoming a valued leader in all of our communities.