A former chief of the Samson Cree Nation who helped found the first and largest Indigenous-owned financial institution in the country is being honoured by MacEwan University for his entrepreneurial contributions to the community.
Victor Buffalo — elected chief in 1980, one year before the Peace Hills Trust Company was established — will be awarded the 2018 Medal of Excellence at the spring convocation ceremony on June 19 at the Winspear Centre.
Buffalo said while he’s excited about the ceremony, the prospect of addressing business students leaves him a bit nervous.
“It’s stressful. I have to talk to students who are way smarter than I am. I should in the audience.”
The honour is even more special, Buffalo said, as his granddaughter, who is in the arts and communication program at MacEwan University, will be celebrating her convocation the following day.
Buffalo has received several honours from educational institutions around the province, a remarkable accomplishment for someone who grew up in the residential school system.
“Even though I was only a few miles away from home, I was a world away from my family,” he said in a news release Monday. “I led an isolated life, lonely and disconnected from my Indigenous heritage.”
But Buffalo earned a chemical technology diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in 1964.
Eventually he landed a job as a community development officer for the Indian Association of Alberta. That took Buffalo back to his community, where he became involved in politics.
He served served two terms as a band councillor and was elected Samson Cree Nation chief in 1980.
Buffalo was involved in the fight to include Indigenous rights in the Constitution Act and led a legal challenge for constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples.
The following year, he helped found the Peace Hills Trust Company, which has grown to include eight branches with a workforce of that’s 70 per cent Indigenous.
Since then countless Indigenous-owned businesses have received financial support from the institution.