SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Hailing from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation in Quebec, a passionate businesswoman and supporter of Indigenous entrepreneurs will speak in Yellowknife Tuesday.

Sunshine Tenasco is an entrepreneur who supports Indigenous businesspeople across Canada. She is scheduled to speak at the YWCA's annual general meeting on Tuesday. - photo courtesy of Sunshine Tenasco

Sunshine Tenasco wooed the hosts of TV series Dragons' Den with her baby moccasin business, after this success she hasn't stopped. CEO of Pow Wow Pitch, a place for Indigenous Canadians to pitch business ideas and win start up funding. She recently started Her Braids, a social entrepreneurship project to bring clean drinking water to Indigenous communities.

Tenasco will speak at the annual general meeting of the YWCA Yellowknife Tuesday evening. It is the first visit to NWT by Tenasco, who has energized Indigenous start-ups and entrepreneurs across the country. Yellowknifer spoke with her ahead of her visit.

The following interview has been edited for brevity.

Q: What are some of the things you'll be sharing at the talk Tuesday?

I'm going to be talking about a couple of projects that I started. About Pow Wow Pitch which actually helps Indigenous entrepreneurs get micro grants to start their business and also Her Braids.

And then having a sort of sharing circle, open up conversations and talk about some hurdles and how we could possibly all get over them together and how we can help each other.

Q: Who do you hope will come to the talk?

I hope it's people interested in entrepreneurship, people who want to do something. I really love movers and shakers. But even just curious people, Indigenous people who have something to either contribute or want to learn something. I think that the right people always show up to these events.

Q: How did your passion for entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship get started?

That was sort of a fluke because I've never studied business, I didn't do any of that stuff. But I made baby moccasins and everybody was asking me about them and so I kind of took a leap of faith and went on Dragons' Den and made a deal with two of the dragons, with Brett and Arlene.

Q: Tell me a little bit about why you chose social entrepreneurship to tackle the issue of drinking water in First Nations communities?

People ask me that all the time and it just sort of came to me as I was beading. I bead all the time and I make things with my hands.

Clean drinking water was an issue that's near and dear to so many people who live in First Nations communities. Our community specifically didn't have clean drinking water for 15 years and still 40 per cent of our community still doesn't have clean drinking water.

And we're really close to Ottawa, like really close, an hour and a half.

I kept saying someone has to do something, someone has to do something and then one day when I was beading these necklaces and I was like, 'I wonder if these could...' and that's how it started. I wrote a letter to the David Suzuki Foundation and the rest is sort of history.

Q: Is there something about art that works for this type of social entrepreneurship/activism?

I think so because beadwork ... is something positive and it's something you put good intentions into it.

Whether you're beading with a group of women or men and women you talk and you converse and you learn in a good, positive, relaxed way. And it's so much easier to have conversations.

You know you have your boardroom meetings and everyone's sort of tense and dreading it. Whereas when you're around a table beading, conversations just naturally happen because you're sitting there and you're focused on that.

Q: What do you think it takes to be an entrepreneur?

It's action, really. I think that people come to me all the time and talk to me about this and they have all these great ideas. Like really, really great. And some I'm like, 'Wow,' blown away. And I think it's just to take that step, not a big step but people stop at the idea phase.

Q: Why do you think it's important to encourage entrepreneurship among Indigenous communities?

Because I feel like we've been doing this all along, we just called it trade. OK, so maybe you're not making enough money to make ends meet but you can. And how do we come up with solutions to be able to support your family doing what you love?

For Indigenous people I don't know how many people actually know what entrepreneurship is and so it's to create that climate, it's to help build that and say OK, this is an option.

No matter where you are you can do that. From your home.

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