BUSINESS
Changing attitudes, making money
Awards add to entrepeneur's pride in her aboriginal heritage
Winnipeg Free Press - May 13, 2000
By Murray McNeill

Growing up in Manitoba in the 1950s and '60s, Elaine Cowan remembers how her mother would try to hide her aboriginal roots.

"I thought about it in high school and I was confused (about why her mother would do that)," the effervescent founder of the Anokiiwin Training Institute and Anokiiwin Employment Solutions Inc. said yesterday.

"It wasn't until I was working that I started to figure it out. I thought, this is wrong. This is unfair. My mother spent her (sic) entire life being ashamed. "And I thought, if there's any way I could be a change agent... I would do that."

So for the last 25 years, and the last five in particular, that is how the formal civil servant has lived -- as an agent for change. She's been consumed by a desire to instil a sense of pride in as many aboriginals as she can and she strives to do that by providing the skills they need to become successfully employed. She believes that once that is accomplished, aboriginals will develop pride in who they are.

Training

Cowan's efforts during the last five years to provide aboriginals with culturally relevant, real-world training and skills development ahs earned her admiration and respect that extends far beyond Manitoba's aboriginal community.

For example, she was anmed the 1999 Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in the start-up business category, and Thursday night she was named Manitoba's top female entrepreneur of the year and winner of the Impact on the Local Economy Award at the Manitoba Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Awards dinner in Winnipeg. The Manitoba awards came just two days after ATI won an award for emerging technology at the third annual Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce Technology Innovation Awards luncheon.

Cowan said yesterday she remembers saying in her acceptance speech on Thursday that she's proud to be a woman, proud to be an entrepreneur, and, most of all, proud to be aboriginal.

The pride in being an aboriginal -- her parents were members of the St Peters (now Peguis) First Nation -- is evident in the way Conan has decorated her ATI office and training centre in downtown Winnipeg. Aboriginal artwork adorns the walls throughout in the main-floor reception area and boardroom.

ATI owns the three-storey, St. Mary Avenue building that is home to the training institute and its one-year-old sister company, Anokiiwin Employment Solutions Inc. AES is a human resources and consulting business that finds qualified aboriginal workers for professional jobs within the private and public sectors.

The current headquarters are a far cry from the one-room Broadway office where Cowan launched ATI in 1995. And today's business operation, with training centres in Winnipeg and Thompson and a staff of 40, also is a far cry from the two-employee setup that Cowan started with.

While she's proud of the way her firm has grown in the last five years, Cowan has no intentions of resting on her laurels. She and her business partner, Ray Starr, are negotiating with several Manitoba first nations that want ATI to establish training centres in their communities, and a Nunavut entrepeneur who wants to partner with ATI to establish a centre in Rankin Inlet.

She and Starr also want to expand Anokiiwin Employment Services into Saskatchewan, Alberta and northwestern Ontario, and ATI has been approached about setting up aboriginal training centres in South Africa and Kenya.

To pave the way for international expansion, ATI and AES have both applied for ISO 9002 certification. Cowan expects to obtain the certification within the next three to four months, which will ensure the operations meet accepted international standards.

Although ATI is willing to establish training centres in all these different places, the goal in most cases will be to turn the centres over to local aboriginal groups.

In addition to planning the future development of ATI and AES, Cowan also spends time giving speeches on the urgent need for Manitoba and other provinces to form a strategy for developing employment skills among members of their fast-growing aboriginal communities.

"My objective is to make sure the message gets out that this province, this region, has this huge human resources pool that is total underutilized."

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