Jean Marie River has a new chief, Paul Simon, and new representatives for youth and elders, all elected on Oct. 28. But the four councillors joining them weren’t elected in the same way.
For nearly a decade, the Tthets’éhk’édélı̨ First Nation in the N.W.T. has been trying a different approach to choosing its leaders in Jean Marie River. The chief is elected, as are two councillors representing youth and elders, but the other four councillors are chosen by family groups.
The arrangement has prompted different views about whether it is bringing the community together or reinforcing divisions between families.
In 2025, 68 people lived in the small community on the banks of the Mackenzie River, about a two-hour drive from Fort Simpson.
In October, each of the three main families in the community — the Norwegian, Sanguez and Hardisty families — chose their own representative.
The fourth council seat is held by someone from one of the community’s three smallest families: the Sake, Gargan or Minoza families.
Misty Ireland, a band member who lives 400 kilometres away in Hay River, just wrapped up a three-year term representing the Norwegian family.
“I was voluntold to do it,” she laughed, explaining that you don’t say no when your whole family asks you to do something.
Ireland said she likes the family representative system and believes it has helped bring band members into the political process who might otherwise have stayed on the sidelines.
“In your family grouping, it’s exciting to talk amongst yourselves: ‘I think uncle or auntie would be a good candidate, let’s ask them.’ As an individual, I feel like that allows me another avenue of engagement in our political process,” she said.
Misty Ireland spent three years on Jean Marie River’s council. (Submitted by Misty Ireland)
Ireland points to a number of accomplishments the council has achieved over the last three years by working together across family lines, such as making a new subdivision plan and purchasing several small homes. For Ireland, that’s evidence that people can be chosen to represent their families while still working for the interest of the entire community, as the new custom election code instructs them to do.
“The dream is that it strengthens unity amongst the community,” she said.
Gladys Norwegian was the chief in 2015 when the community decided it wasn’t satisfied with the conventional way of doing elections under the Indian Act, in which band members vote in a chief and council. Norwegian says residents wanted the change, which the Indian Act allows, because they thought family representatives would be better at sharing information with their respective family groups. There was also the perception that, as Norwegian put it, “there’s one family that was running everything,” such as hiring people, in a community with very few opportunities for work.
“A lot of times, people complain that there’s only one family that seems to be holding positions in the community,” said Norwegian, who comes from the community’s largest family. “It was looked at as this could be a way to equalize everything.”
Gladys Norwegian, pictured here in 2024. She was the chief of Jean Marie River in 2015. (Kate Kyle/CBC)
Marilyn Hardisty is an elder from the community and has served three terms as a family representative. She has her own reasons for thinking the new system isn’t working, explaining it puts too much pressure on small families.
“I have to say, I don’t agree with it … In my family, there’s only me, my younger sister, older brother who is 83, his daughter and two nephews, and most of them are not interested in sitting on council. So there aren’t many people to choose from in some of these families,” she said.
She thinks the council could run just as well with only a couple councillors and a chief.
Norwegian doesn’t think the family representative system has improved any of these issues, and says the community could work together more easily if people focused less on family groups and more on their shared heritage — which, in Jean Marie River, goes back nearly a century to three sisters who were among the very first to settle in the community.
The Three Sisters
Marilyn Hardisty’s grandmother Margaret was one of the original Three Sisters who founded Jean Marie River in the 1920s. The sisters came from the Fort Providence area, and their descendants went on to form all the main families that currently live in the community.
“Everyone in Jean Marie River,” Hardisty said, “is descended from those three sisters.” She said over the decades, the different families tended to keep to themselves and drifted apart somewhat.
Marilyn Hardisty is an elder from the community and has served three terms as a family representative. (Submitted by Marilyn Hardisty)
Norwegian says that, at the band’s last AGM, people talked about making a family tree and putting it up around the community to reinforce family connections. She doesn’t believe changing the electoral system was necessary, and says simply staying true to Dene values is the key. When she was chief, she put up four words on the whiteboard at the band office: relationship, responsibility, reciprocity and respect, and hoped people would let those concepts guide their day-to-day interactions.
Norwegian says small communities could learn from the way a flock of geese flies. “When the leader gets tired, he goes to the back and then another one takes over. So everybody, you know, is pulling the load for the community.”
She thinks back to her father Louie Norwegian, a former chief, who told her how the community made decisions. “There was no such thing as a band office … When there are issues to be dealt with, they gather at someone’s house, or in the summer they go outside and discuss. It’s not always one person who has the skills to lead the way. Very informal, but they get the work done.”
A new generation of leaders
The new youth representative is 25-year-old Zaida Sanguez. She’s new to politics but says time on the land hunting and trapping has shaped her perspective on leadership.
She says, regardless of the electoral system, a successful future for Jean Marie River depends on the education of young people in Dene language, history and values, all of which she sees as deeply connected to the land.
Zaida Sanguez, 25, is the new youth representative for Jean Marie River. (Submitted by Zaida Sanguez)
“I understand that everything is office-based — meetings and everything — but you find more peace … on the land than you do sitting behind a desk,” she said. “And when you’re more at peace, you’re more level-minded, you’re able to basically step back and really take a different point of view of life … you are able to make better decisions.”
For newly elected chief Paul Simon, these questions are now his to grapple with. He says he has seen the family representative system in action at a few council meetings and says it’s a fair system.
“Each family group is different — each has its own traditions and values — so I think it’s a great idea … I think it’s a good idea so every family group feels like they are heard.”
Paul Simon is the new chief of Jean Marie River. (Submitted by Paul Simon)
That said, Simon adds that he’s open to changing the way leaders are chosen as the community evolves and its needs change.
Ultimately, he says, the challenge is finding a way to govern that reflects not just the different families and their views, but the community they all share.
