Skip to content

Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres hold annual General Assembly in North Bay

'There's corporate business, but it's also our collective business about the future, about priorities, relationships with government, with other organizations, Indigenous and non' Sylvia Maracle, executive director OFIFC

The Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres held the 49th Annual General Meeting of the largest urban Indigenous service group in the province, in North Bay this weekend.

Indigenous Centres like the one in North Bay, are part of a 28 Friendship Centre member network.

Over the course of two days, 150 delegates met to set the stage for what their priorities and plans will be for the next year or two.

“It’s our annual meeting so it's corporate business, but it’s also our collective business about the future, about priorities, relationships with government, with other organizations, Indigenous and non (indigenous),” said Sylvia Maracle, executive director of the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres.

“When it comes to government, I think the big issue for us is capital, and I think it is about employment and training. We have an enormously quick growing youth population, and if we don’t spend some energy, time and resources in options for them, we’ll be repeating the patterns that we have with respect to the deficit perspective people have when they think of us, and we want to have a perspective of prosperity and resiliency, so we need to make an investment in that kind of approach.”       

Funding will support programs at the local level.

“The OFIFC goes to the government for funding,  and flow it through to the different Friendship Centres throughout Ontario,” said Kathy Fortin, executive director of the North Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre.

“In North Bay we have 26 different programs, and the other Friendship Centres have anywhere from 10 to 30 programs. They include anything from healing and wellness to daycare, and school, so there’s a lot of different programs.”  

Maracle says the meeting provides an opportunity for open dialogue and finding ways to communicate those ideas.

“We’ve had conversations going on for many years, and I think have very much been leaders in the field about programming. It’s not just enough to talk about a problem, it’s what do we do about it and I think that’s more the nature of the conversation we’re having.”

Ideas can lead to something bigger.

“It becomes part of training projects, of research projects, of policy positions with government, of priority setting in terms of our own activities and human resources, and it also gets shared. For instance, we’ll have a conversation with respect to ending violence against Indigenous women and girls, and that will be shared with native women, with the Chief’s organizations and mainstream as well.”

Conversations will go beyond concerns and issues.

“It’s talking about action and how do we address them and what are the opportunities to be creative within the system we have, and the relationship with the new government in this province,” said Maracle.

“Ending violence, healing, education, cultural revitalization of the people. We talk about justice and the over-representation in terms of cops, courts and corrections, and a lot of that starts from child welfare. Post-secondary education is another part of the conversation. We have our own post-secondary institution called the Original People’s Learning Centre. And we also have our own research process and methodology that’s community driven. So that will be the nature of the conversation.”

The Federation is organized so that youth make up 25% of the formal board. All Friendship Centres brought three delegates, one who may be a young person up to the age of 24.

Youth representative, Chelsey Arsenault sits on the OFIFC Reconstruction Committee.

“There is a youth council under the OFIFC, and we are currently trying to restructure that with new policies and procedures, basically starting from scratch. We’re hoping to get more youth engagement in local Friendship Centres and for our voices to be heard past our local Friendship Centres, so at the provincial level as well,” said Arsenault.

“I think our biggest issues right now are youth engagement and the lack of funding with our youth, and how we can better support each other. Even though all Friendship Centres are here, not all Friendship Centres have the youth, dedication or the money to support their youth. The money would be going to local youth councils to enhance job opportunities, training opportunities, and also knowledge of getting culture back.  A lot of young people don’t know how to go about tradition.”

Delegates report back to their individual Friendship Centres.   

Next year’s AGM will be in Dryden.