More than three decades ago, Karen Bell had the distinction of being the first female police officer in Garden River First Nation.
Now she’s the very first Ogimaa Kwe — an Anishinaabe term widely used for a female chief — to lead her community following the Sept. 19 elections, which have resulted in an upheaval of Garden River’s band council and the toppling of former chief Andy Rickard by nearly 200 votes. Bell had previously served as councillor for three terms prior to being chosen as chief.
Chief and council signed an oath of office during a ceremony at the community’s recreation centre Wednesday night, with Bell receiving a standing ovation after addressing band members.
“Well, it’s really overwhelming,” said Bell, speaking with SooToday at the ceremony. “The evening of the voting, I had a feeling — I had a good feeling — that we were going to be close. I thought it would be up and down.
“But at about two o’clock in the morning when everyone was allowed in, we looked at the numbers, and they were overwhelming. I knew that people were asking for change, and obviously, they wanted it.”
Kari Barry, Darwin Belleau, Lee Ann Gamble, Kristy Dawn Jones, Travis N. Jones, Chester Langille, Luanne Povey and Candace Sim were all elected to council following the Sept. 19 elections. Langille and Belleau were the only two members of the previous council to keep their seats.
And the change at the leadership table doesn’t end there: the majority of council members are female, Bell pointed out, while a female will serve as head councillor.
Now that chief and council have been officially sworn in following Wednesday’s ceremony, the real work on the ground begins.
Bell said there are a number of council members who are new to the table and their roles, which means they’re going to have to get up to speed in terms of understanding the complexities of day-to-day affairs in the First Nation.
Garden River has multiple departments comprised of over 300 staff, in addition to numerous service agreements with both the federal and provincial governments.
“It’s just really complex, it’s going to be a lot. It’s overwhelming actually, but in a good way,” Bell said.
Bell believes the new direction for governance in Garden River should only help the new chief and council. The First Nation has extended its previous two-year terms to a period of four years, while the number of councillors at the table have been scaled back from 12 to eight.
Four-year terms will benefit the community as a whole, Bell added, as membership will have councillors sitting at the table for a much longer term.
“You’re just getting going — you get to understand what’s going on, you get settled with how the organization is working at the governance level — and then you’re starting to worry about, ‘am I going to get in the next time around,’ and those things are playing in the back of your mind, when you should be focusing on moving forward,” she said. “Four years is going to give us a good solid foundation, and a good solid group to work with to move forward and make those decisions.”
Accountability and transparency were recurring themes when chief and council members addressed membership during the oath of office ceremony and was reiterated by the chief while speaking with SooToday.
All requests made to councillors by band members will now have to go through the executive assistant in order to create a footprint that shows a request was made.
The chief administrative officer (CAO) for Garden River has been directed to compile comprehensive reports on each department. There will also be discussions with the CAO, Bell said, about a financial audit “so we know exactly where this money goes.”
Chief and council will be engaging with the community throughout nearly every step of that process, she added, in addition to doing its due diligence in keeping people up-to-date on what is happening.
Back in 2021, Bell challenged what she felt was a lack of fiscal transparency at the council level, suing Garden First Nation and a pair of fellow council members for libel after council passed — and later rescinded — a censure motion requiring Bell to remove a social media post decrying a lack of financial transparency, and to acknowledge that the information was incorrect.
“During the last term I had requested a number of times our financial statements and a budget. For the last year we have seen nothing,” read the social media post in question, which was posted publicly to Bell's Facebook page in October 2021.
The lawsuit was tossed out by the Ontario Court of Justice in the fall of last year, a decision that was subsequently upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal this past summer.
Garden River First Nation asked the court to order Bell to pay more than $21,000 in legal costs. The court ended up slashing that dollar figure down to $12,000.
Bell told SooToday that without financial transparency, there was a sense of mistrust and dissatisfaction amongst members with the previous band council.
“I only challenged it because members were asking,” she said. “I didn’t properly put the language out there in a good way, so it kind of ended up on my shoulders, which I own and I accept.
“But at the end of the day, I was asking for accountability, and that’s what people wanted. They wanted to know how their money was being spent and where their money was going.”
The new chief of Garden River has taken a one-year leave of absence from her role as sergeant at the Anishinabek Police Service without pay. Once that year is up, Bell will have to make a decision on whether to retire from the police service or go back to work, as per the collective agreement.
But deep down, Bell knew it was time for a change. “At the time of the nomination, I was prepared for a change in my career and a change in my life,” she said.
Ogimaa-Kwe Bell thanked community members for “putting so much trust” in her to make decisions — and do the right thing — while speaking on their behalf.
“I was simply floored by the fact they had enough courage to vote for me,” Bell said.