Better Ask Nellie
“Ask Nellie.” Those words are spoken a hundred times a week in this tiny corner of the Canadian Arctic… Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The Nellie they refer to is Nellie Cournoyea: activist, politician, pioneer and now CEO of a multi million dollar corporation. The fact that her first name is enough, speaks to the hands-on, grass-roots, leadership style that has kept her in charge, for close to three decades.
In many ways, the story of Nellie Cournoyea is the story of the new North. In her lifetime, she has seen Northern aboriginal people go from relying on the ups and downs of the fur industry and on government handouts, to truly being masters of their own social and economic destiny.