Aboriginal Leadership
launches new applied
research projects

By Brian Calliou

Applied research is a strategic focus for Aboriginal Leadership and Management at The Banff Centre, with two initiatives now underway.

The first initiative comes with Nexen’s generous donation of $1 million to establish the Nexen Chair in Aboriginal Leadership. The Nexen Chair will research and document case studies that tell specific stories about the critical elements of success. These success stories can then be translated and applied in other Aboriginal communities that choose to undertake similar initiatives.

Dr. Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux of the University of Toronto is the first Nexen Chair, a trained researcher with extensive experience in community work. Cynthia wants the research, knowledge, and success stories to be accessible to Aboriginal communities and meet their needs.

The second new research initiative, Building Sustainable Leadership for Community Development, is supported with a $1-million donation by Suncor which will help fund a pilot research project working directly with four First Nations communities. The communities will play an active role in identifying and analyzing problems, co-designing action plans , assembling internal teams to put the plans into action, and measuring results.

Community participants will document their learning journeys, co-write a report with researchers, and play a role in telling the story. The knowledge they acquire in this solution-based learning journey will provide the community teams with skills they can use to tackle other community challenges.

The documented case studies, knowledge and success stories will also be shared in a variety of media – text, photography, video, and on-line.