Read the full transcript of Adam’s interview below.
It is my goal in life to work on behalf of our community and to advance our interests and our rights.
Can you tell me a little bit about who you are and where you’re from?
ÍY, SȻÁĆEL SIÁM, unknown SENĆOŦEN. My name is SȾHENEP. My English name is Adam Olsen. I am the son of ZȺWIZUT, Carl Olsen and Sylvia Olsen and the grandson of Laura and Ernie Olsen, ZIȻOT and TELQUILEM. I’ve lived on Tsartlip and W̱JOȽEȽP my whole life. I’m a proud member of this community and the W̱SÁNEĆ nation. Up until recently, I served as the member of the Legislative Assembly for Saanich North and the Islands.
I’ve spent a lot of time working in governance and governments outside of our community and working to advance our interests through those various different bodies that I’ve been a part of. I’ve always had a sense that at some point, I would like to return and come back and take what I’ve learned and take those experiences that I’ve gained, and it’s been an honour to represent W̱SÁNEĆ in and at these tables in the legislature and at the various tables.
I’m really blessed, and I’m very honoured to be able to be in this role with W̱JOȽEȽP. It is my goal in life to work on behalf of our community and to advance our interests and, most importantly, our rights forward to ensure that we have the ability to be able to take care of the things that we as W̱JOȽEȽP and more broadly W̱SÁNEĆ people need to take care of, on behalf of our territory and on behalf of our communities.
It’s an honour to have been successful in this job application, and now the goal is to be successful in the job. It’s my hope, it’s my dream, that we can move forward like I’ve seen other communities moving forward around the province. To take those examples and to apply them here is very exciting. I look forward to having conversations with my relatives here in W̱JOȽEȽP and, more broadly, about what our dreams, hopes, and desires are. How we can see that come to life through the negotiating table is very exciting to me. I look forward to the work in the coming weeks, months, and years.
What kind of work will you be doing with Tsartlip as a Lead Negotiator?
I’m just starting to figure out exactly what all of that entails, but essentially, I will be sitting at the table on behalf of Tsartlip, representing Tsartlip at whatever negotiating tables are created. We’ll be working with the Chief and Council and the community to better develop in detail what we’re doing at those tables and what we’re negotiating at those tables.
I’m still a little bit unclear and setting up what that communication framework is, what the community engagement pieces are. We’re making sure that the work that we’re doing on behalf of the community is informed by the community and is leading to direct benefits for our community.
What background and experience do you bring to this position?
As I said in my introduction, I’ve been sitting at similar tables to the negotiating tables that I’ll be sitting at on behalf of Tsartlip. I’ve been sitting there as the member of the Legislative Assembly. I’ve been representing our community, both Tsartlip and the broader W̱SÁNEĆ community, as the member of the Legislative Assembly. There have been a lot of tables that I’ve sat at with one or more of the chiefs and councils.
I think that I bring a pretty strong sense of how government works or doesn’t work and how it’s doing both of those likely at the same time, which is a bit of a challenge. I have had about 16 years experience in elected public office so I’ve been around a lot of these discussions, and I’ve been around a lot of the people who are engaged and understand how these systems are both working and not working for our community. I’m really thrilled to be able to focus the work that I do on behalf of advancing our rights and title here in W̱JOȽEȽP and the broader nation-building experience that’s underway in W̱SÁNEĆ.
What kind of impact do you hope to have during your time in this position?
I would really like to see our community advance obviously. I think that for the last 175 years, the systems that have been set up, both at the provincial and the Federal crown governments, have not been there to serve First Nations communities. They’ve been there to fragment and divide First Nations communities. It’s been a deliberate and intentional systemic structure that has produced the outcomes that our communities are experiencing.
The provincial and federal governments have found a way to worm their way in between our families and our communities. They’ve created governance structures that serve the Crown governments and not our people, our relatives, or our territory, more broadly. My hope is that success looks like finding ways to create those systems that serve us, that serve our community’s needs and interests, and that allow us to fulfill the rights that we have inherently as Indigenous people in this country and in this province, but also our treaty rights that have been negotiated and that have been long neglected by the federal and provincial crown governments.
Success looks like the short-term, immediate benefits, but it also looks like a much different relationship within W̱SÁNEĆ, within our relatives and the other village leaderships, as well a much different relationship with the Crown governments and regional and municipal governments that are our neighbours, directly at our borders of the Indian reserves.
I think that I see this as both short-term and medium/long-term potentials. There are things that we could immediately benefit from, and then much longer-term discussions that I think will be had with the community going forward as to what those medium and long-term benefits are and structures that serve us.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I’ve spent the last seven years as an MLA, so it has felt like work has been the only thing that I’ve been doing. In that role, you go to the grocery store to buy a jug of milk as an example, and it feels like you’re working because people want to talk about this issue or that issue. It’s been a job where I’ve had to always be on and available for people. This past weekend was the first weekend where I woke up on Saturday and went, “Oh, actually, I don’t need to.”
The first thing that I’d like to do in the most immediate term is find some hobbies. Standing on the sidelines of my son Silas’s games at the soccer field is one of the first ways of getting back engaged with the community in a different way. It’s been a lot of fun to be back on the sidelines, so that’s something that I really enjoy and think will probably be part of my life going forward.
Both my kids are in musical theatre and in acting, and there’s something very attractive to me about that. Of course, as a politician, you stand on a stage, and now that stage is somebody else’s to stand on. Perhaps I’d like to test my hand at doing some acting and, I wouldn’t say musical theatre is something that anybody will want to see me do because I don’t sing or dance very well, but perhaps a local stage, some local theatre, maybe in my future. But for now, it’s just a matter of settling in in this job, taking some space and hanging out with my family in a way that I haven’t been able to over the last seven years, and exploring all the different opportunities that I can spend extra time, whatever that is, away from work.
