The grace and ease that Tina Fox emulates as a community leader has long been noted and it’s landed her another notable award.
Fox, a residential school survivor and active Stoney Nakoda Nation community member, was selected from six nominees as the recipient of the 2017 Rotary Club of Cochrane’s Integrity Award.
Nothing about Fox’s life made maintaining personal integrity easy. However, she credits the injustices and turmoil she suffered as a driving force for her to find truth.
“It’s an honour,” Fox said. “To be recognized, to have your integrity no matter what happens – even if you’re the only one standing up. I don’t follow the crowd or I don’t fear standing up alone.”
Fox lost her mother very early in her childhood and along with her two younger sisters was raised by her grandmother. For 11 years, she attended a residential school where she was physically and emotionally harmed. It wasn’t until an empathetic teacher recommended she attend Cochrane High School where she would find relief but be faced with new forms of discrimination.
She recalls her non-Indigenous classmates whisper “Indians on a warpath” as she walked by.
It was years after graduating and enrolling in the Calgary School of Nursing where she trained as a Certified Nursing Assistant and 10 years practicing in Edmonton, Lethbridge and Halifax that she would face more discrimination, this time amongst her own people.
In 1976, Fox became the first elected female councillor for Wesley First Nation – and at the time, it was thought to be a “man’s job.”
“When I went to attend my first meeting I said something and the guys laughed. They thought it was funny that I spoke up,” Fox said.
“There were also older women who were mad at me for taking on a man’s job. I don’t know when people decided council work was a man’s job but I guess that’s where these people were coming from,” she said. “‘It’s not proper for a Stoney woman to be on council’ and that kind of stuff – I had to put up with that.”
During the 14 on and off years she served as a councillor, a provincial judge, John Reilly, called for an investigation into the Stoney chief and council finances - a contentious issue that still mars the Nation’s politics. Fox was the first to show her support of the inquiry.
“When I stood up after John Reilly’s call for an investigation … that was quite scary.” But after she spoke out on the tribe’s poor management of funds, many other community members began sharing their experiences of poor housing conditions and lack of support from their chief and council.
“That gave me the courage to stand up,” she said.
Reilly said he first met Fox a year before the investigation. She told Reilly about a healing circle she was partaking in for a suicidal young man who had a caused a fatal accident that killed her niece.
“She taught me one of the most important lessons in my life,” the former judge said. “It was an amazing example of the different attitude of my justice system and hers. And I actually thought her’s was a lot better.”
Reilly said from then onwards he became more supportive a justice system that was sympathetic and helpful to perpetrators rather than reprimand them – so much so he stepped down from being a judge years later.
Fox can be credited for a number of transparency policies within the Stoney Tribal Administration. She also chaired the Stoney Nakoda Health and Social Services Department when the Stoney Child and Family Services and the Eagle’s Nest Family Shelter were established. Fox also chaired the Stoney Adolescent Treatment Ranch Board of Directors, a facility she worked hard on reopening.
Her work earned her the prestigious Women of Distinction Lifetime Achievement Award by the Calgary area YWCA in 1996.
While Fox’s leadership made her notable in her community, behind the scenes the sorrows life presented her were all too draining.
Fox lost her eldest son, Moses, in a car accident in 1986 just before he turned 18. Her husband, Kent, died from ALS 10 years later.
Then, in 2014, her grandson Mike died from an alcohol and drug overdose during an outdoor party on the reserve. Kimberly, Fox’s middle daughter and mother of Mike, unable to bear the grief of losing her only child took her own life later that day.
Two years ago, Fox lost another grandson, Thomas, to alcohol poisoning.
“It’s just not natural for a grandmother to be burying her own children and especially grandchildren. But I had to walk through that,” she said.
“A lot of people view me as being strong. In the privacy of your bedroom, you’re crying your heart out all the time.”
Warren Harbeck, a lifelong friend of Fox, said he’s learned lessons of respect and wisdom from her.
“For most of my adult life, Tina has been an example to me of what a true human being looks, thinks and acts like. She has modeled for me such traditional Stoney Nakoda values as respect, determination, endurance, compassion and forgiveness – values essential for the whole human race,” Harbeck said.
“I will never forget Tina’s wise lesson from a crocus.”
Harbeck explained a moment, back when Fox was serving as councillor, she saw one particularly beautiful crocus growing on the hillside by her home.
“It was growing right out of the middle of a cow pie,” Harbeck recalled. “Apparently, that image stayed with her for some years, because in 1998, when she mounted the platform to receive the YWCA-Calgary region Women of Distinction Lifetime Achievement Award and to give the feature address of the evening, she retold the story of that crocus – but with a very special spin. She learned that when the (tribal council) were dumping on her, just like that crocus growing out of the cow pie, they were really just making her all the more beautiful.”
“Tina has long modeled for me the beauty of a life of compassion and forgiveness amidst conflict and cultural diversity,” Harbeck said. “So much, much more could be said about this amazing human being. But this, at least, is a start.”
