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

Aboriginal ownership. Since owners of a co-op are the members, this definition means 50%+1Aboriginal members. Another definition focused on the community: if the co-op serves anAboriginal community, that co-op could be labeled an Aboriginal co-op. There was however nospecification as to the level of involvement in the community. A third definition put forward thepower of the decision process. If management is primarily of native origin, then the co-op couldbe termed Aboriginal. Here also, there was no consensus as to the level of management or theproportion of Aboriginal managers.ABC’s definition that focuses on ownership seemed adequate since it is more precise than theother two. But it was impossible to implement because the Secretariat does not collectinformation on the ethnic origin of the members. Instead, the Secretariat used its broadknowledge of the co-op sector to select Aboriginal co-ops. The selection was based on theAboriginal location of the co-op. Since Aboriginal co-ops are generally used by the members ofthe community, the definition is community oriented. No proportion numbers (e.g. thepercentage of Aboriginal people in the community that are using the co-op) were taken intoaccount in this definition, that could therefore be described as ad hoc. To reinforce the selectionmethod, the Secretariat sent the list of Aboriginal co-ops to the appropriate provincial authoritiesfor verification. There were very few corrections to the list and the Secretariat was able toproceed.66