[Big hat tip to Hammer of Thor]

As much as natives driving around in pickups waving machetes and shotguns seems scary, this guy takes scary to an all new level:

[Osoyoos Band Chief Clarence Louie] is speaking to a large aboriginal conference and some of the attendees, including a few who hold high office, have straggled in.

“I can't stand people who are late,” he says into the microphone.

“Indian Time doesn't cut it.”

“My first rule for success is ‘Show up on time.' My No. 2 rule for success is follow Rule No. 1.”

“If your life sucks, it's because you suck.”

“Quit your sniffling.”

“Join the real world — go to school or get a job.”

“Get off of welfare. Get off your butt.”

“Our ancestors worked for a living,” he says. “So should you.”

Yeah, my eyes popped open too. There's more:

“The biggest employer,” he says, “shouldn't be the band office.”

He also says the time has come to “get over it.” No more whining about 100-year-old failed experiments. No foolishly looking to the Queen to protect rights.

The first step, he says, is all about leadership. He prides himself on being “a stay-home chief who looks after the potholes in his own backyard” and wastes no time “running around fighting 100-year-old battles.

“The biggest challenge will be how you treat your own people.”

“Blaming government? That time is over.”

Put aside the pithy one-liners. Here is a summary of what he has done for his band:

Since 1985, when first becoming Chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band in British Columbia, Clarence Louis has consistently emphasized economic development as the fundamental method for improving his people's standard of living. Under his direction, the Band has become a multi-faceted corporation that owns and manages numerous successful businesses. In addition to the businesses, the band is enjoying socio-economic development that is vastly improving the community's social, educational and health needs. Under his leadership, there is virtually zero unemployment. The band continues to increase its revenue each year and decrease its need for social assistance. Chief Louis created and manages eight businesses, including, a golf course, a construction company that builds both on and off reserve commercial and residential projects, a forestry company that logs 30,000 cubic metres annually, the largest privately owned vineyard in Canada, a convenience store, and a residential and agricultural leasing company. One of the bands largest projects has been its eco-tourism resort campground and RV Park that includes a marina and a 120-room full service hotel and gas bar. The cash flow generated from the businesses helps fund the Medication Fund, the Adult In-Home Care Program, a Recreation Complex, an Education Fund and a Patient Travel Fund. Ecology remains a high priority for Chief Louie with 890 acres set aside for water quality, fish and wildlife protection. Chief Louis has been recognized for his work with many honours and has extensive board memberships. He has been featured in The Economist, in Profit Magazine and in Maclean's as one of 50 Canadians to Watch. Chief Louis is a man who understands that economic development is the way of the future.

What's this? Success without a casino or tax-free tobacco?

Though I can't find a specific comment from Chief Louie about the native occupation in Caledonia, I think we can infer what he thinks about people who use violence and lawlessness to pursue long-term success:

Chief Clarence feels that leadership requires courage, vision, balance and drive and that to be an effective leader these qualities must be present and able to be drawn upon when the "going gets tough". He understands that "in order for you to attract and develop business opportunities, you must first develop a climate that's organized and secure" and has worked relentlessly to this end.

And what about tradition?

"I won't go to a meeting these days unless it has to do with creating jobs and making money," Louie announces bluntly to a small gathering of band councillors and administrators from the Saulteau First Nation near Moberly Lake in northern B.C. "I spend my time on economic development and I don't care what you say; everything costs money. Even our traditional ceremonies cost money."

It's the first and last time you'll hear this renowned (No. 40 on Maclean's 2003 Watch List of Canadians) First Nations business leader utter the word "tradition" during his PowerPoint presentation, but you'll quickly lose count of the number of references to "economic development."

Yeah, my eyes are still wide open.

And none of the traditional feather-and-leather wear either:

In his neat blazer, pressed black trousers and wire-rimmed glasses, he could be mistaken for a Fraser Institute pundit.

And like a Fraser Institute pundit, he's got no time for government meddling in private enterprise:

Louie was born in Oliver in 1960 and at the age of 18, he enrolled in Native American studies at the University of Saskatchewan, eventually completing his degree in Lethbridge. In 1984, at age 24, he was recruited to run for chief of the Osoyoos band. He won his first campaign and hasn't looked back since. When he first took over the council reins he walked into a stereotypically dysfunctional band preoccupied with running Department of Indian Affairs (since renamed Indian and Northern Affairs) social programs and crippled by rampant nepotism, acrimonious band politics and social problems. The single band-owned business, a vineyard started in 1968, limped along year after year accumulating losses. Not surprisingly, he says, collectively his band was a symptom of a system the government instituted - one of welfare dependence and shoehorning bands onto marginal lands at the expense of job creation and economic development. But, he concedes, aboriginal leaders are also to blame, too eager to become the servants of federal programs instead of real advocates for change. "Any time we can kick DIA out of our business, we do it," he says.

But that doesn't mean you take the business from incompetent bureaucrats and hand it over to incompetent natives, either:

His council recently decided to install clocks at the band council and OIBDC offices to curtail truancy, and strict rules guard against the kind of nepotism that is common on Indian reserves where sisters supervise brothers and the chief hires his wife to do the books. Surprisingly, there's not a single member of a First Nation on the OIBDC's board of directors because, Louie says, business isn't about race - it's about expertise. "There's a group of natives that feels entitled, and that needs to be changed to a culture of performance," he says. "You don't hand over the keys to a multi-million-dollar business to someone who hasn't earned it. That's a recipe for bankruptcy."

So let's see: get an education, get a job, get off assistance, stop moaning about traditions and lost land and old treaties, dress up right and don't cut a fellow native a break just because he is a relative or because of the colour of his skin.

You see why this guy is dangerous. He challenges every preconception on both sides of the divide. For non-natives who worry that natives are doomed to government assistance, dead-end work in casinos and smoke-shops, and criminality, Chief Louie forces them to drop those stereotypes. For natives who are fixated on tradition and nursing old grudges and ancient legal arguments, he challenges them to prove how their way is morally superior to his which has brought peace and prosperity to his band.

And the real irony is that I'm not sure that Chief Louie cares all that much about it. For him it's a waste of time. There's money to be made.