BI-CULTURAL LEADERSHIP:
Dr. Allen Benson
CEO of NCSA

 

 

Over the course of its forty year history, Native Counselling Services of Alberta has consistently been at the forefront of the campaign for social justice and self-determination for Alberta’s aboriginal population, and under the energetic leadership of current CEO, Dr. Allen Benson, has broadened the scope of its activities considerably. At the helm of NCSA since 1996, Benson characterizes the agency’s history as a long and challenging journey. “Our organization has been around for 40 years, and it’s taken us this long to gain the confidence we have now,” he asserts. “It’s been a long journey gaining the confidence to say that we can do these things ourselves, that we can find solutions to our problems.”

Charismatic and seamlessly bicultural, Dr. Benson in many ways epitomizes the modern aboriginal leader. a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Benson is at once a world citizen – having at one time served as an advisor to the Ministry of aboriginal affairs of New south Wales, Australia – a devoted member of his community and a tireless advocate of Alberta’s aboriginal people. For Benson, who frst became involved with NCSA in the late 1970s, the road to his current position has been one of constant personal growth, and it is this personal growth which he seeks to foster among his staff in his current role as the agency’s CEO. “I started young in the organization, so I had the opportunity to grow,” he explains. “You grow personally as well as professionally in an organization like this, and I think that was one of the key things for me. When I came back to NCSA in a leadership role, I recognized how much I had grown over the years and I understood that we needed to create opportunities for our staff to become healthier and to grow.” a core element of this, he continues, is to foster a culture of self-determination. “as an agency our job is not to provide a mediocre service,” he asserts. “We have to challenge ourselves to provide the best possible service for our people – and in doing so challenge the system and the community. as an organization, we know that we have to take responsibility for the problems and for the solutions. and we’ve proven ourselves to be a truly self-determined organization, and a strong leader across Canada in justice, corrections, community development and training.”

NCSA was still a youthful organization consisting solely of its fledgling Aboriginal Courtworker program when Benson first joined its ranks in the 1970s, a hugely transformational period highlighted by the emergence of some of the most fiercely independent and uncompromising leaders that the aboriginal community has ever seen. For Benson, the notion of ‘self-determination’ was a central theme throughout the activism of this period. “When you look back at the history of the leadership in the sixties and seventies, when all the tough battles really went on, this is when we saw the real turning point for change in aboriginal policy,” Benson explains. “Harold cardinal was challenging Indian affairs Minister Jean Chrétien around the White Paper and got the government to repeal it. On the Métis Nation side you had guys like Stan Daniels, who dealt with poverty and housing issues. and then you had Al Chartrand and Chester Cunningham – in Manitoba and Alberta respectively – who saw how aboriginal people weren’t being properly represented in courts and didn’t have equal access to justice. and that’s how things like our Courtworker program got started, and was all rolled out from there.” Benson contends that their success was contingent on their willingness to challenge their own people and to take their communities’ problems into their own hands. “It was at this time that [aboriginal leaders] actually started to use the word ‘addiction’ – before that nobody used it or wanted to talk about it. This wasn’t just about the government. It was about communities taking responsibility for their own problems.”

 

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