Kear Porttris, with a new civil engineering degree from the University of Victoria, is seeing fresh opportunities for First Nations in B.C.
“The sheer capacity of First Nations is becoming pretty substantial,” said Porttris, 31, Saskatchewan Métis on his father’s side.
“It’s no longer just residential schools and lack of education. Those things are important, but I think capacity is building and we are seeing more and more strength and more push-back.”
Porttris is one of 37 civil engineers who will receive their degrees on Wednesday. They are the first class of civil engineers to graduate from the program.
Since beginning in 2013, the students have focused on issues of sustainablity and First Nations communities. Porttris is now starting a master’s degree at UVic, looking at housing in First Nations communities.
Porttris, a single father of a six-year-old daughter, Abi, said he owes much of his success in completing the program to support from indigenous students, the Métis Nation of Greater Victoria, the engineering faculty and his own family.
He had to take a break from studying for one year, but was able to convince his mother to move from Toronto to help him through a marriage breakup and with childcare. During the year off, he heard of UVic’s plan for its civil engineering program.
Porttris believes that B.C., with its lack of treaty settlements for First Nations people, is unique in Canada. Without treaty documents tying native communities to places or conditions, they are in a position to say “stop” when development moves in.
Builders and engineers of big projects, such as pipelines, bridges, and dams, are just beginning to realize First Nations people must be accommodated and consulted, Porttris said.
“The biggest piece is consultation when you are working with First Nations peoples on these big projects,” said Porttris.
He said non-native Canadians often don’t appreciate that First Nations culture will ask for a more consensual community-level decision, instead of decrees from the top.
But First Nations people have developed enough confidence to refuse big, development-style solutions to their own community problems, Porttris said.
Life in many communities can be better improved with small-scale engineering efforts and big projects are often inappropriate, he said. Small-scale power generation or water purification can be a better fit and be less disruptive for a First Nation community.
“Aboriginal people now have a new drive to be autonomous and they want to build up their own communities,” said Porttris.
“They don’t necessarily want to be connected to the main grid because it might just become a new dependency issue,” he said.
