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Ahead of the Feb. 3 shíshálh Nation hihewus (councillor) byelection, Coast Reporter reached out to each of the five candidates.
Age: 69
Contact: [email protected], 604-740-6292
Introduce yourself. What is your experience or background?
My native name is Mayukw, which means in our language, grizzly bear. I'm the hereditary leader of the Joe clan of shíshálh, which is the biggest family. My experience goes back generations with my family, Clarence Joe, and all my other relatives. I was on the council from 2013 to 2016. I've been involved in most of the elections in the last three terms. I'm very excited by getting into this race because I have a lot of ideas that I've been putting together for the last nine years. So being with the new council here would be fantastic. Another thing I brought to the Nation was that I negotiated the Lehigh agreement, now Heidelberg, I was in negotiations with them early, then Warren Paull finished it off.
Why are you running for election?
We're moving in a powerful direction, the shíshálh Nation. We have got to look at our court case, we got to look at our Foundation Agreement. These are top priorities with me and another thing is healing the people on the Coast here. With drug addictions and all that, that's really big with me, I've been working on it for many years. I speak to Sechelt's Mayor Henderson a lot about the drug addiction issue. We’ve got to do something.
I'm really pushing forward green energy on the Coast and growing our own food, like what Salish Soils is doing. We got to move in those kinds of directions.
If elected, what projects or priorities would you focus on for the next two years?
I need to take a look at what the new chief and council are doing with their projects, but green energy is top, drugs on the Coast is top. Looking into strengthening our presence on the Coast.
What concerns have you heard from the public?
The Pender Harbor issue up there. I've been working on that file for the last 10 years and I'm not happy about what happened. That'll be one of my main focuses, meeting with Area A Director, Leonard Lee.
We need a big influx of funds for housing: top priority with the Nation is always housing. We need at least 200 units more and that's what I'll be fighting for. Not only for housing here, housing on the other side, which we always say is the white side. But we’ve got to bridge that gap. and Mayor Henderson is a person that's trying to do that with our people.
Another project is pulling everybody together and having a good life. I was thinking about a big auditorium for our young people. I’ve got a lot of ideas. It goes from mining to governance to healing on the Coast, those are big problems, but we can do it.
What do you wish we had asked, or what would you like to add?
I'd like to get all our leaders and our Elders, Chief Calvin Craigan and Tommy Paul, Garry Feschuk, we’ve got to sit down as a coalition and figure out our next steps. That's what my grandfather fought for. It took 45 years for my grandfather to take the residential school down. He's the one that brought in self governance for our people. My grandfather spoke at the United Nations in 1963 for all the Indigenous people in Canada. That's the type of people the Mayukws are, we like to do big things, and those are the big things on my mind.
When you take a look at our land, what do we have here? How many mines can we build in the future, for sand and gravel, for copper, for gold. All these things have to be talked about by the Nation here. It’s amazing what we can do.
Jordan Copp is the Coast Reporter’s civic and Indigenous affairs reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
