Pabineau First Nation trading post balances tradition and commerce

Recognition Business owner honoured at Atlantic Canada Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Awards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkGNhTNzVp0

Barbara Calderone celebrates an award honouring her business success with Chief Everett Martin, left, David Peter-Paul, chief of the Pabineau First Nation and her
husband Joey Calderone. Barbara Calderone was honoured during the second annual Atlantic Canada Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Awards, held at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre in Sydney, N.S.

 

 

By Simon Cheung
TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL

 

BATHURST – Five years into running her own trading post, Barbara Calderone had the opportunity to acquire a liquor licence and along with it, tidy revenue from alcohol sales.
    She turned it down.
    "As a traditional person, I was not supposed to provide that access. So I said ‘no’, even though it would have brought in a lot of money," said Calderone, owner of Pabineau Pow Wow, a convenience store selling Tandy leather, arts, crafts, groceries and computer supplies to the local Pabineau First Nation community and visiting tourists.
    "There’s a stigma that natives are just drunks and welfare people," she added. "You have to over come that when you go out to promote your business. When people hear ‘First Nations’ you have to fight that stigma."
    Calderone also nixed the possibility of developing a gaming section in her store. She currently has three gambling machines, which she monitors to make sure customers don’t lose too much money.
    To develop her revenue, she has steadily grown her clientele to include tourists and internet customers from throughout the United States and as far away as Ecuador, Holland and Germany.
    Calderone, who also provides craft supplies to First Nations schools and sells her products internationally on her website, was honoured this week with an award honouring her success during the second annual Atlantic Canada Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Awards at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre in Sydney, N.S. She beat out six other competitors to nab the New Brunswick provincial award and is currently in her 13th year of running Pabineau Pow Wow.
    Calderone said she hopes the recognition that the awards garner will encourage young aboriginals in New Brunswick to educate themselves so that they can make an impact in the province’s business community.
    "It shows the generation coming up that we can break out of this stigma that natives have no future – that welfare mentality, the government-reliant mentality," she said. "You can still succeed in life and make money without going against our teachings."
    David Peter-Paul, chief of the Pabineau First Nation, said that while aboriginal communities near city centres like Sydney and Truro in Nova Scotia can do very well commercially, the geographical location of some communities slows their economic development, he said, is critical if aboriginal communities want to prosper.
    Peter-Paul said a major obstacle used to be the simple fact that aboriginal people did not tend to have the same corporate aspirations as non-aboriginals.
    "Some have become so accustomed to living with less, that they don’t see that there can be a future with more than these things," he said. "The biggest thing to be conquered in order for corporate culture to become something that would feel natural to First Nations people is a change of mindset."
    But the times are changing. With more young aboriginals entering higher education, he said – of the 230 band members in the Pabineau First Nation, four graduated from the University of New Brunswick last year – the communities could learn to embrace their culture while simultaneously develop the skills, training and expertise to succeed in industry.
    "As time goes by, we’ll have more and more and more people working outside the community because they’re more educated, "said Peter-Paul, who himself holds a degree from UNB. "There’s a trend in terms of our communities developing their human resources capacities quickly."
    He said he has seen aboriginals under take projects in gaming and aerospace in the past few years – ventures that would not have been considered 30 years ago.
    The challenge now, Peter-Paul said, is to try to keep money and educated workers in their communities, instead of losing them to large city centres.
    "Education is something I’m really pushing for, but we (also) have to crate more wealth in order to keep these university graduates," he said.
    Toward that end, Peter-Paul said the Pabineau First Nation has brought its employment rate from 40 per cent to 100 per cent in recent years through programs designed to create opportunities for workers of all skill sets.
    "First Nation communities struggle with trying to find the resources and revenues for resource development. We’re on fixed annual budgets," said Anita Ward-Boyle, economic development officer for Metepenagiag First Nation and winner of the economic development officer of the year award.
    Community funds are often used to provide community services she said, and business development falls outside of that. Ward-Boyle said many would-be aboriginal entrepreneurs have cash flow and education issues, making small business startups difficult.
    Residents of First Nation communities, for instance, cannot use their homes as equity.
    Other New Brunswick award winners included the Metepenagiag Outdoor Adventure Lodge and John Bernard, president and CEO of Ottawa-based technology company Donna Cona Inc., who won the Atlantic entrepreneur of the year award. Bernard is originally from Madawaska.

 

-article from The Telegraph-Journal Friday September 15, 2006.