A young member of Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation has been elected to the First Nations Advisory Committee at Vancouver Island University.
Sherry McCarthy is currently studying for a Bachelor’s degree in business administration at VIU, and she wasn’t about to let something like impending childbirth stop her from representing her fellow First Nations on the committee, which is called Hwulmuxw Mustimuxw Siiem.
“I was elected the day before I had my baby,” McCarthy said. “On March 14, I had a delivery by C-section. I had gestational diabetes and there were complications with the pregnancy.”
McCarthy said her physicians kept a close watch on her pregnancy and had ordered a weekly ultrasound.
“The doctors thought she could be up to 12 pounds, so they made the decision to operate,” she said.
McCarthy and her husband, Danny Mattice, named their new daughter Sierra. She joins sister Catina, who is two-and-a-half years old.
With the student union set to meet on Monday, March 19, McCarthy took her place at the table as promised.
“I attended the meeting because it was my first,” she said.
McCarthy believes it is important that First Nations students–especially those from small communities–are able to receive support when they attend post-secondary school, to make the transition. For that reason, she is also involved in a campus program called Community Cousins, where she serves as a mentor for incoming First Nations students.
“I feel you put into it what you get out of it,” McCarthy said. “We volunteer to go to other schools and talk to students to let them know what is available to them when they come on campus.”
McCarthy said VIU has an active First Nations population drawn from all over the province, and the gathering place for aboriginal students, Shq'apthut, is a hub of activity, both social and political.
“About 10 per cent of the VIU student body is First Nations, but we represented about one-third of those who voted in the student union elections,” she said.
McCarthy said her pursuit of a BBA is geared towards her goal of starting her own care facility in her home territory near Gold River.
“I worked in the health care field for seven years. I got my education through the Pacific Association for First Nations Women. I took a community health care certificate in Vancouver and I was a care aide for seven years,” McCarthy said.
As part of her training, McCarthy also certified as a doula, or labour coach, assisting women with childbirth, as well as working in palliative care at the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation clinic in Vancouver. McCarthy said her work and training experiences all reinforced her belief that there is a need for more First Nations health care professionals and for care facilities for First Nations people.
“We also need to have more business students,” she added.
Plans are now in the works to make that happen, McCarthy said. Currently, she has been able to include some First Nations studies into her BBA program.
“The lady I’m working with on Community Cousins [Sharon Hoganstand] is working on integrating aboriginal business at VIU, to encourage more students to come. I’ve been working with her as an advisor, telling her about the classes I have been taking,” she said.
McCarthy’s goal is to help develop a curriculum that would allow future First Nations students to receive a business administration degree tailored for a career in the aboriginal community. She has now been tentatively recruited to serve on an advisory panel–contingent on being able to graduate in 2013.
For now, however, the goal is to learn what it takes to create a new business from scratch, which, in the case of a health care facility, means writing proposals: for permissions, for funding and for related tasks like re-zoning.
“That’s going to be part of one of the classes I’m taking this summer,” McCarthy said. “We’re going to be writing a proposal for an aboriginal gathering. We have to compete with the rest of the class, in groups, to get the funding.”
McCarthy said she is confident she and her team will earn the right, and the funding, to take on the prestigious project. Based on her accomplishments so far, one has to like her chances.
