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

~ C A S E S T U D I E Sunemployed. At the end of the project, everyone working on the project had a good idea wherethere were good huckleberry and soapberry patches and we had a freezer full of berries. Theidea of starting a business started as a joke that we should make the berries into jam and sell itto tourists after we weighed them. But the idea started to be seriously considered as we realizedthat we now knew where some good berry patches were, and it was clear that a lot ofpeople could use some extra income. Over the period of a few months after completion of theresearch project, several of us who had worked on the project informally discussed the idea offorming a co-op, checked out the requirements for establishing one, and scouted around thecommunity to see if there were any funds or grants available.Getting Off the GroundWe decided to base an enterprise on co-operative principles because we believe that a cooperativeis a democratic way for a community group to run a business. Half of the originalorganizers were First Nations people affiliated with the Gitxsan Treaty Office, and they likedthe idea of clan-like, communal organization. People pool resources and ideas, but in a co-op,only one vote per member is allowed, regardless of the number of shares held. This is differentfrom a standard corporation, in which there is one vote per share (allowing a single shareholderto sometimes have a lot of power), and assures equitable community participation at all levels.Membership would be open to the public and anyone could become a member by purchasingat least one share. We decided that all people picking berries, processing them, or helping withthe distribution and marketing of jam would have to be members of the co-op. Holding oneshare would allow members to participate in its business activities, to vote on issues broughtforth at the annual general meeting, to participate in the election of a board of directors whomake decisions about the co-op throughout the year, and to receive updates on the co-opthrough newsletters. People would be encouraged to buy more than one share if possible, inorder to provide working capital.One of the first steps in registering any organization is reserving a name with the provincialgovernment. We decided that the co-op should have a Gitxsan name, since most of thebusiness was conducted on Gitxsan land and (in the initial stages) all of the First Nationspeople involved were Gitxsan people. We settled on the name Wilp Sa Maa’y, which means“House for Berries” in the Gitxsan language, then applied for reservation of the name with theBC Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations. Once that name was approved, we had ourfirst organizational meeting, consisting primarily of the technical people involved in the shrubbiology research project. At that first meeting, we reworded a stock set of co-op by-laws andfilled out the official papers to become a registered co-op. The interim board agreed that ourco-op would like to pay a decent wage of ten dollars per hour to anyone who worked for theco-op. The wage would be set at the same price as the cost of a single share so people couldtrade berries or time for shares if they wished. We each bought a share for ten dollars and~ 379