Soonias Leading Farm Credit Canada’s Indigenous Agricultural Efforts

Abstract

Farm Credit Canada (FCC), the country’s largest agricultural term lender, has been around since 1959. But it’s only been the last few years that the Crown corporation, which reports to the Canadian Parliament through the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, has taken a much more serious approach to Indigenous agriculture. “How to support Indigenous agriculture wasn’t part of the mandate and wasn’t maybe looked at seriously until [the] early 2000s,” said Shawn Soonias, a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. “Leadership made some efforts to understand the opportunity and what the role might look like. It was [in] 2019 that the company was able to create that role that I occupy as director of Indigenous relations.”