BY JILL MACYSHON
FROM her spacious office at the large Winnipeg manufacturing facility and showroom for Dreamcatcher Promotions, Michelle Cameron remembers what she once believed Indigenous success looked like.
“I was sixteen years old, and I walked into a RBC bank and there was a First Nations woman as a bank teller. And I thought ‘Wow!’ I left smiling ear to ear thinking ‘Oh my God, we can be a bank teller!‘ That was the highest-level professional I’d seen growing up.” Cameron says. “Now looking back, we need to change that thinking. There is no goal we cannot reach.”
Three decades later, Cameron has built the largest Indigenous-owned promotional company in Canada. And she has expanded into the fashion industry. Her clothing store, Indigenous Nations Apparel Company (INAC) was the first Indigenous-owned business in Winnipeg’s CF Polo Park.
A band member of Peguis First Nation, Cameron launched her business while raising five children.
“I bought a used embroidery machine, I watched YouTube videos for two or three months. I figured out how to embroider watching these videos. And I continued practicing until I was good enough to confidently say I owned an embroidery business.”
She worked Monday to Friday as a daycare coordinator, then spent every night and each weekend building her business, driving to meet clients and filling orders from home. Cameron was finally able to open her first 700-square-foot storefront with a start-up loan and grant from the First People’s Economic Growth Fund, a joint program run by the Province of Manitoba and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. Her first employee was her mother. Now, 12 years later, Dreamcatcher Promotions has outgrown two locations and Cameron employs 66 people.
“In the beginning, 100 percent of my business was First Nations organizations, communities, groups that supported an Indigenous business. And that’s how we grew, because of the support we got from the community.”
Indigenous entrepreneurs are creating businesses at nine times the rate of other Canadians. Prior to the pandemic, there were an estimated 60 thousand Indigenous-owned businesses across Canada, contributing $32 billion dollars to the economy, economic growth is now forecast to hit $100 billion.
Philip Ducharme, Vice President of Entrepreneurship and Procurement at the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business, says Indigenous entrepreneurs are in every industry in Canada, from the resource sector to retail, manufacturing and construction, tourism and technology, but barriers to financing and funding is slowing growth. A recent report By the First Nations Financial Management Board shows Indigenous businesses “can access less than 0.2% of available credit in Canada and 11 times less capital than comparative Canadian firms”.
“Access to capital,” Ducharme says when asked the number one restriction. “There are a lot of First Nations businesses that are based on reserves, and they really have the greatest challenge with access to capital because of the Indian act. They can’t utilize their houses on reserve or their assets on reserve.”
Any entrepreneur will tell you capital is the fuel that fires their business start-up. It gives the owner the ability to buy equipment, rent a storefront, build inventory. But systemic and legislative barriers make business financing more difficult for Indigenous entrepreneurs. Collateral is often the first and biggest challenge. In Canada, Section 89 of the Indian Act prohibits the “charge, pledge, mortgage, attachment, levy, seizure, distress or execution” of personal property of a First Nation’s person trying to start a business in a First Nation’s community. From a banking perspective, blocking the ability to seize assets and secure loans, restricts the lender from providing funding.
Heather Berthelette is the Chief Executive Officer of Tribal Councils Investment Group. She says economic reconciliation means leveling the playing field for Indigenous entrepreneurs.
“If you are an on-reserve citizen you often don’t have that first generation of wealth, you don’t have the assets, you don’t have the family wealth to depend on to help bring 20 percent in cash to the table.” She said. “There doesn’t seem to be a recognition in the banking system yet, that there’s got to be other avenues, other ways of doing this.”
As CEO, Berthelette led The Tribal Councils Investment Group in launching the Spirit Healthcare Group of Companies, including SpiritRX Services, which delivers prescriptions, medical supplies and medical equipment to remote communities. She says many Indigenous entrepreneurs have great ideas to help their communities and spur economic growth, but to get their start they need to find creative ways to work at their start-up business, while holding down a full-time job to pay the bills and build collateral. Berthelette says most major banks have departments specializing in Indigenous banking, but she believes those banks are still working in the confines of a colonial system. Requiring years of T4s to show income, or a high credit rating.
“In many cases those hoops (for Indigenous entrepreneurs) are even tighter, under the guise of, I guess, inclusion,” she said.
BMO’s Dan Adams is the interim head of the Indigenous banking unit in Ontario. He says lenders need to do better, and that means making changes.
“If we can’t take security, what if we don’t take security?” Adams said.
BMO conducted consultations with First Nations, discussing challenges, gaining knowledge and in the end collaborating with the communities, finding new solutions to compliment programs already offered by BDC and Indigenous Financial Institutions. Last fall BMO launched a zero-barrier lending program, offering unsecured loans, up to $150 thousand dollars.
“What we wanted to do was fill the gaps,” Adams said.
“So, the line of credit seemed like a great solution. When we had consultations with entrepreneurs and asked what do you really need? And often what we would hear is ‘I just need to buy some equipment’ or ‘I need to buy supplies.”
Adams says some entrepreneurs just need a credit card to get started.
“So there’s a full suite of products and solutions that banks have, and we wanted to make that accessible to the indigenous entrepreneur.” Adams said.
Navigating options for start-up funding seemed overwhelming and complicated for Alex Mason. The 28-year-old always knew she wanted to use her creativity in business. She went to school in BC, and once she finished her degree in graphic design, she decided to start a business back home in Manitoba. She had a vision to use her artistic skills to create custom apparel, signs and banner designs for clients. She launched ‘Imprints & more’. A 100 percent female indigenous owned business.
“I applied for a lot of loans through First Nations companies, I also tried government,” Mason said. ”I wrote a lot of essays and business plans to show what I was planning to do. “
But after months working to secure funding, she was at a loss. With the help of her father, who is in the construction business, she secured a loan through one of the big banks, and opened her doors to clients. Now six years later, after fighting through the lean years of Covid, she is still the one and only employee, but she is finally seeing her business grow.
“I recently did 10 thousand shirts that were sent to First Nations’ for a kidney walk,” Mason said. “Most of my business is still here in Manitoba, but I am going across Canada, and I’m doing a little bit of business in the States.”
Michelle Cameron says its not just start-ups that need the help. She says lenders should check-in with business owners in years two or three, the growth stage, when a line of credit may help entrepreneurs expand further, or keep the business afloat.
“I’ve been approached many times to buy out smaller businesses because they can’t make it, and I don’t,” she said. “They need to find ways to survive. They need to be innovative, Because I think they have great potential. They just need that help in between.”
Cameron endured many tough years, always finding new ways to do business. She believes changing the parameters and addressing that funding gap, would allow so many more Indigenous entrepreneurs to build on that dream of success.
Cameron intends to build Dreamcatcher Promotions, as well.
“I’ve hit the dreams I’ve wanted to hit, so I’ve got to dream a new dream,” she said smiling. “In five years I want to see 100 employees here.”
