Aboriginal Co-operatives in Canada - Centre for the Study of Co ...

A P P E N D I X I ~communities in Canada, the population of the territory is only 6,839 people according to 1992figures 3 ), those businesses cannot achieve any economies of scale, and consequently cannotcompete with businesses in the metropolitan region in terms of prices. This special situationexplains, in large part, the difficulty that local businesses have in staying open for long periods.Most of the businesses on the reserve are small-scale: little stores, a few restaurants, three golfcourses, and a few construction firms. Those businesses employ about a third of the population.Other members of the community work in the Montréal region or in the United States onseasonal contracts (Huberdeau 1989 (b), p. 22).The economic situation on the Kahnawake reserve is difficult. Like other Aboriginal reservesin Québec, Kahnawake has a high unemployment rate. During the winter months, it can reachas high as 40 percent. It falls in summer, however, since nearly half of the men go to theUnited States to work on construction sites. That influx of capital makes a significant contributionto the community’s economic wealth. In terms of income, Kahnawake is regarded asone of the most prosperous reserves in Québec. The community is therefore able to anticipateannual income from all sources of about $40 million (Huberdeau 1989 (b), p. 22). However,most of that income is spent off the reserve.The primary objective of establishing a caisse on the reserve was therefore to keep those largecash influxes in the community. The decision to opt for a co-operative organization was madefor the same reason. The Mouvement Desjardins allowed for relatively autonomous managementof funds. The democratic and community-based aspect of the caisses was also of considerableimportance to the founders. “As a co-operative movement, the philosophy and spirit ofDesjardins is no less than our own, the people of Kahnawake, of the Mohawk Nation, and ofthe Iroquois Confederacy” (Caisse Populaire Kahnawake 1997, p. 2). The founders thought itextremely worthwhile to provide the community with an institution in which the customerswere also members who could take an active part in decision making. At a time when theMohawk Nation was seeking to revive its culture and take back control of its economy, thecaisse populaire offered an excellent resource for that purpose.A Political RevivalWhile the reserve had seemed, in the 1970s, to be doomed (loss of the language—even today,the Mohawk language is spoken only by those over the age of fifty—and loss of a measureof political autonomy, although the reserve was ultimately given municipality status by theMinister of Indian Affairs), a political revival began to be evident by the mid-1980s. In somerespects, it might even be said that the self-government movement became radicalized. About3 Source unknown, La présence du mouvement Desjardins en milieu autochtone (document obtained from the CooperativesSecretariat)306 ~