December 28, 2024

Playing to Win: How a First Nation Turned Around Its Fortunes

The trip through Cape Breton Island, on the northeastern tip of Nova Scotia, promised scenic driving views. The island regularly appears in travel guides for the world's best road trips, an agent at the airport's car rental counter told me in September after I landed in Halifax.

A man in a blue shirt, with shadows behind him.

Chief Terry Paul of Membertou First Nation was re-elected in June, his 40th consecutive year leading the community. Andrew Testa for The New York Times

I didn't get to take in much of the landscape on my rainy overnight drive to Cape Breton from the other end of the province, where I had been reporting on a forthcoming story related to lobster fishing. Over the course of my interviews, several people suggested that I visit an Indigenous community on Cape Breton Island called Membertou First Nation.

Its entrepreneurial chief, Terry Paul, led a coalition of First Nation groups to make the largest-ever investment by Indigenous people in Canada's seafood industry in 2021. The coalition acquired 50 percent of Clearwater Seafoods, a company in Nova Scotia, in a deal valued at 1 billion Canadian dollars. In September, Membertou partnered with another First Nation and made a deal to acquire one of the oldest shipyards in Canada.

Membertou is buying back land to expand the boundaries of the community, once a place where pizza delivery drivers and taxis wouldn't venture to cross. Graduation rates have climbed. Mi'kmaq language revival projects are underway. Young people are staying.

After seven hours on the road, I didn't quite notice my arrival onto the reserve grounds until a large red sign outside a convention center emerged through the fog: "Membertou: Welcoming the World."

"We were considered to be the backwoods before," Chief Paul told me. "In the last few years, people have begun to call it uptown," he added, half-jokingly.

A shop in a white building, with a sign on the roof and a flag flying in front.

A tobacco and gift shop on the reserve. The community has invested in other amenities, including a convention center, youth center and heritage museum. Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Membertou has all the trademarks of Anytown, Canada: neat cul-de-sacs, a Tim Hortons drive-through, weed shops aplenty. For visitors, Membertou may resemble an unremarkable suburb, but its infrastructure and wealth stand in stark contrast to the living standards facing many Indigenous people who reside on reserve land, where poverty and health inequities are glaring.

About one-third of people with legal Indigenous status live on reserves, the land that the government designated for First Nations. Many communities were forcibly displaced, as happened to Membertou, from their traditional territory to less desirable locations or barren lands.

Many reserves struggle with decaying infrastructure, run-down housing and undrinkable water. About 20 percent of Indigenous people live in low-income households, on and off reserve, compared with 10 percent of other Canadians, according to the last census in 2021.

The weight of cultural and economic repression was heavy, Chief Paul told me, and life on the reserve felt stifling. He sought out mentorship in Boston, where he worked at an Indigenous nonprofit and learned the ropes of governance that shaped his business savvy.

"In the United States, some of the tribes called their heads not chiefs but chairmen," he said. When he returned to work for the reserve's government, he steadily rose to the top as chief executive, cleaning up Membertou's balance sheet and brokering deals that allowed the community to be less dependent on government funding. But he's somewhat shy about the attention, poking fun at the print headline in an article about the Clearwater deal published by The Globe and Mail, calling him "big fish."

Improving the welfare of his reserve through business opportunities is a winning strategy for Chief Paul, 73, who was re-elected in June for his 40th consecutive year in office.

"You have to play the game, play to win," he said. "That's what I do. Now, if that's a businessman, then I guess I'm a businessman."

A row of houses, with telephone poles and wires rising above a street.

Membertou has grown to about 1,800 members and has acquired land for future commercial and residential developments. Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The First Nation is eying future land acquisition and increasing revenue streams to support the community's young population, Trevor Bernard, Membertou's executive director, said.

His brother, Darrell Bernard, is leading language and cultural education projects to promote what he called "intergenerational wellness," the answer to intergenerational trauma, to which he attributes some of the addiction issues he has seen.

My last stop was Maupeltuewey Kina'matno'kuomin, or Membertou School. Lucy Joe, the principal, said there were three dozen students in her day, but the school has grown to about 140.

"A lot of other First Nations communities look at Membertou and learn from how our leaders have decided we're going to take it upon ourselves to become self-sufficient," she said. "I'm proud to be a part of that."

Over time, she changed her mind about moving to another town for her career.

"I didn't want to leave," she said.

Trans Canada

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Vjosa Isai is a reporter and researcher for The New York Times in Toronto.

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