Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson

Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson

Business & Commerce (2019)

Westbank First Nation, BC

Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson is the Owner and President of RMD Group and one of the most successful Indigenous entrepreneurs in Canada. After being elected Chief of Westbank First Nation in 1976, he began to use his business experience to lift his community out of poverty, eventually making it one of the wealthiest bands in the country. He served as Chief of the Westbank First Nation from 1976 to 1986 and from 1996 to 1998. He was made Grand Chief by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs in 2012. In 2015, he became an award-winning author when Unsettling Canada A National Wake-up Call, a book he co-authored with Arthur Manuel, won the Canadian History Association Literary Award. His second book co-authored with Manuel, Reconciliation Manifesto, went on to win the BC Book Prize for Nonfiction and appeared on the best books of 2017 lists of the Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire and the Writer’s Trust. Derrickson is now working on his third book, a personal memoire.