About Garry
Qualification, Skills & Publications
Garry Oker is a respected First Nations Leader with a Masters Degree from Royal Roads University.
Mr. Oker is a multi-talented individual. He functions comfortably in traditional and modern settings and can speak the Dane-zaa language, facilitating communication between First Nations and an international business audience regarding complex land issues.
He also understands the legal challenges surrounding First Nations rights and resource development.
He has a broad range of experience working at community levels resolving socio/economic issues. Mr. Oker understands management change in political environments and has a passion for developing strategic solutions that incorporate traditional values in natural resources development.
He has the ability to work with diverse people from different backgrounds and the ability to attract competent individuals to project management.
His artistic talent allows him to incorporate traditional knowledge into First Nation business concepts. His approach to applying technology to art design makes his presentations visually dramatic and on the cutting edge.
His Masters Degree thesis was used as the framework for a successful re-negotiation of the MOU agreement between the Ministry of Energy and Mines and Council of Treaty 8 Chiefs.
His gap analysis on the oil and gas referral system and traditional knowledge data collection process led to meaningful consultation with the oil and gas industry regarding resource development.
Accomplishments
Over the past 18 years he has applied creative processes in design development, marketing, and business promotion.
While Chief of the Doig River First Nation, he negotiated with oil and gas companies in respect to land access by creating a clear and meaningful consultation process, using an interest-based storytelling visioning concept.
As Chief, he led the First Nation Trustees, with Deloitte and Touche, an accounting firm, to develop a long term community development trust and a socio/economic investment trust that has generated multi-million dollar business ventures for the Doig River First Nation.
He also strategically led the Treaty 8 Council of Chiefs in setting the stage for negotiating revenue-sharing and resource management with the British Columbia provincial government, bringing creative thinking on complex land and resource management issues to the team.
He has managed multi-million dollar community programs that are culturally acceptable to the First Nations, and created an information framework for long term land and resource management relationships.
Another of his projects is the First Nation design school that brought an entrepreneurial performing dance troupe into the curriculum and, more recently, a virtual museum educational website.
Current Projects & Interests
Mr. Oker now consults for profit and non-profit organizations, working closely with the First Nation political and business leaders and with many of the elders from the communities.
His company, Oker Consulting, has the expertise to facilitate and identify strategic processes that incorporate First Nations values into land use planning and resource development frameworks.
He speaks passionately regarding the resource development impact on the environment and how that may affect the traditional land use by the Treaty 8 Nations. He promotes the use of traditional knowledge data collection that allows First Nations an opportunity to identify the gaps between existing conditions and future development.