This section includes Workshops Details
and Plenary Session Information.

Workshops
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A Forum on Leadership will include panelists who are leaders in local, municipal, provincial and federal politics, national organizations and business. Following the Leadership Panel, six workshops on leadership in these areas will be offered simultaneously.

Panelists include:
Brenda Chambers is a successful Aboriginal entrepreneur from the Champagne Aishihik First Nations of the Yukon. She is the executive producer and host of Venturing Forth, a weekly series on APTN that makes the important connection between economic success in Aboriginal communities and its social impact on its people. Brenda is the owner of Brenco Media Inc., the media production company that produces Venturing Forth. After graduating from Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, Brenda returned to the Yukon and began work on Nedaa, a magazine-format television show for Northern Native Broadcasting. In 1991, she became the executive director of Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon. Over the years she contributed to the CBC Northern Network, Television Northern Canada and APTN. She received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 2005 for her contribution to Aboriginal media and communications as a producer, broadcaster, trainer, lobbyist and mentor.

2. Challenges for the Next Seven Generations Panel

A panel of activists and experts in the areas of poverty, housing and homelessness, family violence, education, employment and childcare will discuss the effect of these topics for the next generations. Following the Panel, six workshops will be offered simultaneously to develop action plans in these areas.

Panelists include:
Rose Henry is from the Coast Salish Nation and has been living in Victoria on the traditional territory of the Songhees people for the past 18 years. Rose is the Vice-President of TAPS (Together Against Poverty Society) and has been an active member on the boards of the Victoria Native Friendship Centre, The Victoria Street Community Association and the Capital Regional Race Relations Association. Rose is a social activist who has worked with homeless men and women who suffer from mental illness, drug addictions and depression and separation issues. Her knowledge of poverty comes from her lifelong experience of growing up with it - first as a child born to impoverished First Nations teenage parents who were survivors of the residential school system, then in a foster home where both her foster parents were also born into poverty to living her early adult life on the streets.

June Laitar is Ojibway, born in Kenora ON. She is the Secretary of the National Aboriginal Housing Association. In 1986, June was a founding member of Kekinow Native Housing in Surrey BC and has served on the Board as both President and Vice-President. She is also a founding member and President of Kla-How-Eya Aboriginal Centre which provides services to the Surrey/Delta Aboriginal Community. June has been a member of the Fraser Region Aboriginal Planning Committee for Children and Families, the Human Resources Canada Sto’lo Nation Advisory Committee, School District 36 Aboriginal Advisory Committee and the Kwantlen University Aboriginal Advisory Board.

Revised: October 24, 2006