Owen Crane Bear was born in Calgary and grew up in the city where, as a young man, he found community when hanging out at a local mall — connections that his father said helped keep him out of trouble.
“That’s when he met most of his relatives, at the Westgate Mall, that’s where the Natives were,” said Clifford Crane Bear.
Owen remembers growing up in the Calgary northeast community of Marlborough and attending a few different schools after his parents divorced.
He didn’t receive his high school diploma until he completed a work program in his early 20s.
After he got his diploma, he decided to help his grandfather with his business.
“I worked probably 16 to 17 until about 28 to 29, mostly in the family business, which was a used bookstore,” Owen.
He learned a lot at the bookstore and was influenced, in part, by his father.
Crane Bear and others who know Clifford describe him as a stern but traditional man whom Owen said he received a lot of advice from over the years.
“If I ever get a little bit of an ego or get too high on my horse, he reminds me where we’re from. I really want to make an effort to be a decent person, and that’s because of him,” he said.
Working in a bookstore paid off. Owen said that reading got his mind working, which he felt that he benefited from.
“It’s one of the things I enjoy. I believe you should read for half an hour a day, and I try to stick to that,” he said.
It was the bookstore that set him on his current path.
“In my late 20s, I said, ‘Okay, I want to go back and get my education and see if there are better opportunities,’” he said.
From selling books to studying business
Owen was accepted into the Business Administration program at Mount Royal University and completed his degree in 2018.
He then applied for a job in the treasury department on the Siksika Nation and was hired.
He eventually became the CFO after the former CFO, Ouray Crowfoot, decided to run for the chief role and was elected.
This job gave him a closer look at how the Nation’s finances were being handled.
“I worked really close with council, I worked really close with the treasury board, and I felt like the governance and the leadership, they could be more supportive,” said Owen.
After two years as CFO of Siksika, Owen decided to run for council.
“I thought, hey, instead of saying, ‘They should do better, they should do better,’ that I should stand up and put my name in there. That’s why in 2022 I decided to run for election and was successful,” he said.
The first term was a learning experience, and he found out that getting things done was a little harder than he thought.
“I really needed to identify where I could help, so I’d say my first term was a lot of spinning my wheels just trying to find where I fit in,” he said.
As it turned out, his love of numbers and finance would help set up the trust fund into which the money from the 1910 Global Settlement was deposited.
The $1.3 billion settlement was financial compensation for land wrongfully taken in violation of Treaty 7 promises.
“We’ve got this billion-dollar settlement, this money should be here for 80 to 100 years, and it should improve the quality of life for all of us,” said Owen. “But we can’t do that without proper financial policies and procedures so that money doesn’t walk out the door.”
Owen was supervised by Chief Ouray Crowfoot while working in the treasury department. Crowfoot served two consecutive terms as Siksika Chief and has known Owen for about eight years.
“Owen, he’s one of the hardest-working people I know. If I’m starting a company, he’s one of the guys I would bring on,” Crowfoot said. “Not only is he a hard worker, but you don’t have to supervise everything he does. If you give him a project, he’ll jump on that project and make sure it’s finished A-Z.”
“He was one of the ones I would bring with me when I met with ministers and federal officials, provincial officials. Owen was one I would bring because of his knowledge,” he added.
“I’ll talk to five different people, they all have a different idea of what the Siksika way is, and this idea that we have to go back to that. But the buffalo’s gone — how do you go back to that?,” said Owen. “Culture means something different to all of us.”
OWEN CRANE BEAR
Culture is important to most Siksika, but it’s something that was never supposed to survive when colonization subjected generations of Indigenous people to abide by Christianity, which is something that continues to divide the community today.
When asked about the future of Siksika, Owen was optimistic and figures that setting young people up financially is a good investment, as long as they have the education and skills to make it work.
“I really am [optimistic]. The kids getting educated now, they’re bright, they’re smart, they’re gonna take us to the next level,” he said. “It’s our job, right now, to make sure they have something there when they’re coming out of school, that they can use all that knowledge, all that youthful energy to get there.”