Calvin Helin, 58, Indigenous lawyer, best-selling author, and business leader, says the real battle of First Nations is in convincing Indigenous peoples to understand that if they want power over their lives they must have economic control over their income.
“We can play the capitalist game on our terms that includes looking after the environment and looking out for the well-being of our people,” he said.
Although Helin is probably best known for his seven times best-selling book, Dances with Dependency: Out of Poverty through Self-Reliance (an incredibly influential book that looked at the causes of Indigenous poverty in Canada and proposed ways to promote economic development) and his second award-winning book The Economic Dependency Trap: Breaking Free to Self-Reliance, he has more recently been involved in a major effort to get Indigenous peoples into oil and gas development in a big way.
Read the entire Profile here: Profiles – Helin – 1
