Native Solution
Winnipeg Free Press - Monday, November 16, 1998

Why didn't I think of that? Everyone at some time has asked themselves that question. A simple idea of merit comes along and we shake our heads in wonder that we or someone else hadn't thought of it sooner. It's so obvious when it's obvious.

Anokiiwin Employment Solutions Inc. is such an idea. Anokiiwin is a new, aboriginal employment agency that opened in Winnipeg on Friday. The first of its kind, it matches increasingly skilled aboriginal job seekers with increasing numbers of employers seeking aboriginal workers. It will register people seeking work and match them with employers or head-hunt persons seeking specific skill sets or who will provide the skill sets through training programs.

That such an agency is needed has been clear for some time. Increasingly, the aboriginal community has been demanding better education and training opportunities as the path away from welfare dependence. But often when the education is acquired or when the training is completed, there is no job for a variety of reasons, including bigotry, but more often ignorance of the size and skills of the aboriginal workforce. Employers, meanwhile, especially in centres such as Winnipeg where the aboriginal population is burgeoning, have come to realize that their prosperity is intimately linked to the prosperity of the aboriginal population. Developing programs to hire aboriginal people, who make up 11 per cent of the population but seldom 11 per cent of a workforce, has been recognized as not only the morally correct thing to do, it is also understood that doing it is good for business.

But while there existed eager job candidates and willing employers, there has not been an agency dedicated to making a fit. There now is.

Providing a bridge, however, is not the only thing that makes the Anokiiwin model a good one. That visible and other minorities are not well represented in the workforce has long been known. Equally well known is that there exists general agreement that something should be done to rectify the problem. Finding a solution, however, has not been so easy. The most obvious solution has been the development of affirmative action programs which, when combined with demands for quotas, have raised the spectre of reverse discrimination and a not-so-healthy debate about ends and means. Anokiiwin provides another way that does not require heavy-handed government intervention, quotas or human rights disputes. If a firm wants to hire aboriginal workers, it need only spell out the qualifications it seeks and let the head-hunters find or develop that person. Now, why didn't we think of that before?

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