Cadmus Delorme talks about his 7 years as chief of Cowessess First Nation
Delorme announced earlier this year he would not seek a 3rd term
Cadmus Delorme was elected in 2016 to his first term as chief of Cowessess First Nation, located about 140 kilometres east of Regina.
Seven years later, in February 2023, he announced he would not run for a third term.
Over his time as chief, Delorme led his community of more than 4,000 members through potential unmarked graves being found at the site of a former residential school on his reserve, a global pandemic and the signing of the Child Welfare Agreement with Canada.
Now, at 41 years old, Delorme lives on his home community with his wife, three children and his wife's younger brother.
Delorme spoke with CBC's Louise BigEagle about his seven years as chief and what comes next.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
CBC: Tell us about your first few months as chief?
Delorme: When I became chief, the honeymoon was about a month. You just get it, enjoy the moment, and then the reality sinks in.
The way I like to explain it is you're handed two suitcases as a chief. The one suitcase is all the history that you inherited — what other Chief and councils didn't address, the prior challenges, the prior things that are the elephants in the room that were hard to discuss. The second suitcase has all the optimism, and inspiration, and why you were elected.
So you have two choices. You can put that first suitcase under the desk, and hide it, and just focus on your duties of the day. But we decided to open that suitcase of what we inherited, you know?
Where is Cowessess at now in regards to the Child Welfare Agreement?
The jurisdiction [over child welfare] is now two years and one month old. So when you haven't had that jurisdiction for 70 years, it's not a light switch off and on.
I like to explain it as like dimming the lights. It's going to take a little transition, where the foundation is set, the policies and the laws are all there. The institutions that support it are there.
In working with the government, we find that where we still are growing is the strategic level. I'll give you an example. We have prevention homes called Sacred Wolf Lodge, where families who are more at risk of have someone intervene in [child care], the family can now go live in these homes, where we immerse them with our own grandmothers, our own kokums, to reteach and and rediscover and reawaken — from morning to dark — how a home fire is stable and and how beautiful it is.
We've graduated a few families out of there and I'm very proud of the model, but the model still has a lot of work to do. This is not administrative jurisdiction that we're used to. This is full jurisdiction. There was a child from Cowessess that was apprehended in a different province. That province called Cowessess and said, we have apprehended a child that is under your jurisdiction. What would you like us to do? Those are moments of truth, where our model can work not just for on reserve but for off-reserve.
So the model is working, and in the years to come Cowessess will continue to mould it to contemporary times, bringing in our traditional aspects, but also making sure the foundation is healing the vertical lineage of the family.
As an Indigenous person, why do you feel its important for there to be more people like you in political offices?
Right now in Saskatchewan … less than three per cent [of decision makers] are Indigenous people. So when you're making decisions for the best impact of us moving forward, we gotta make sure that the tone is set, with the equal amount of right voices at those decision-making tables. The people in power have to better understand the truth of what Indigenous people go through today.
The toughest person to be in this country is an Indigenous female.You just gotta go to the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls calls to justice, the 231. I I would ask a room, "who in here read the 231 calls to justice and which ones are you going to focus on today?"
You've got to do reconciliation to understand the moment and the truth. You don't have to agree with it, but you've got to truly understand it.
If you could go back, was there anything you would change from your time as chief?
I would have empowered specialists in the team, and maybe not moved so fast. I can just say it as, make sure when you move forward that you look left and right, and the right people are beside you moving forward.
I do feel the institutional foundation is set today, with good governance good political sovereignty. We've got a respected name, locally nationally and internationally. But I do feel that some Cowessess members feel that their ideas were not heard. So if I was to go back, I would help create a better communication strategy to make sure that all voices that wanted to be a part of it were beside us.
Do you feel confident that you left your community in a position to thrive?
After two years of consultation and legal and research, we reverted a lot of land back to Cowessess First Nation to shared collectively, and after we did that we started farming. This land is our corporation and we farm 6,000 acres.
Secondly, when you come to houses, you see solar panels throughout the reserve, and we have five areas where we put solar panels, and they sustain our utility bills and public buildings.
Another thing is business. People look at Cowessess today as a low-risk business nation. Business is going to get us out of this moment. We have to understand that we need our children to wake up and watch their parents get ready for work at a kitchen table. You can change so much in the generation and in a home. We've got a business corporation called Ventures which First Nation and non-First Nations sit on, that looks after the whole business of houses.
I'm very proud of our governance structure and I hope more First Nations go this route, because we now have to control our destiny and government has to get out of our affairs.
You were once a golfer. Tell us how the training behind it has helped you as a chief?
I started going to non-Indigenous golf tournaments in the 1990s. No Indigenous people really played in the Saskatchewan amateurs at that time. There was maybe one or two, but it was like very little. My dad would take me over and over and I was telling him, "no dad, I don't wanna go. I'll just stay home."
Finally I started winning. I know now what my dad did. He was showing me that an Indigenous person could succeed in a non-Indigenous environment. As a chief, I would walk into any room or any meeting or any conference, ready to do exactly what my dad taught me, to prove that Indigenous people belong in this room.
Can you tell us what your new role as chair of the new Residential School Documents Advisory Committee is about?
I will go to Ottawa every three months at minimum for the next four and a half years and I chair a committee. What makes this committee so unique is the chairperson, who is me, is not a public servant, because this is a very bureaucratic goal. It's all internal, it's 10 departments from Treasury to RCMP to Health to INAC — today we call it Crown Relations Indigenous Services Canada.
We're working with all their historical documents. We're not talking the 2012 interviews of when survivors told their story. No, we're talking about when a child was sent penicillin in 1939, somewhere there's a record of the invoice for that penicillin. Or if a child had to be returned somewhere, in RCMP documents there is somewhere where that child was returned.
So that's what this committee is doing. We're transitioning over 1,000,000 files out of government that are protected by policy and by legislation, and transitioning them to the National Centre on Truth and Reconciliation.
Whats next for Cadmus, the father, the friend and husband?
I'm really happy I get to coach T-ball in a couple of weeks now. I look forward to spending more time where I should have spent more time in the last seven years, and that's with my friends and family.
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