Sep 24, 2026 · 45 min · 13 segments
Stephen Jackson is the CEO of Anishnabeg Outreach Employment and Training and a leader behind AONest. On this episode, Stephen talks about his journey to this work, how Anishnabeg Outreach has…
Stephen JacksonGuestIan McLeanHostThe organization you built, or you built an organization that sits in the, and pulls all these things together, employment, education, mental health, housing, community development, but the full, I would say the full spectrum of care is what Anishinaabe Outreach is trying to do.
Was that always the vision? Where we've got to now is a lot different than when we first met.
So was the vision always there to have this full continuum of care or did it evolve or the growth come organically as the needs became more apparent? It was more of an organic
piece of it because if you think about it, it was like if you go back to the very beginning of the pandemic, Every city in Canada pretty much declared a homelessness outbreak.
They declared an addictions outbreak, like an emergency, right? They declared food sovereignty emergencies, gender-based violence emergencies.
I mean, since that time, of course, We have war, we have tariffs, we have just incredible pressures on Canada, right? We're now building infrastructure projects to offset all of these things.
That doesn't even count social isolation or loneliness that is going to cause a lot of death for people.
But the biggest issue is the gray tsunami that is overwhelming the health care industry or that will literally lead to unemployment because they simply can't afford to live anymore.
So how do we deal with all of those issues? And I think that was really what we started looking at.
And for us, I go back to what Einstein really said, you know, the definition of insanity is expecting a different outcome from the exact same process.
People are saying we need to fix these things, but no one's really looking at how to do that.
When we looked at the definition of it, it's really about partnership, working together to create outcomes we both care about.
It's all corporate pyramids, right? Indigenous is all about circles, working together within that circle piece.
Help people find housing afterwards, and then help them with wealth building.
And if you do those like four things, then all we have to do at that point is it leads to prosperity and it leads to wellbeing.
And if we go back to the beginning of that, let's take a look at all four of those things in sequence.
The organization you built, or you built an organization that sits in the, and pulls all these things together, employment, education, mental health, housing, community development, but the full, I would say the full spectrum of care is what Anishinaabe Outreach is trying to do.
Was that always the vision? Where we've got to now is a lot different than when we first met.
So was the vision always there to have this full continuum of care or did it evolve or the growth come organically as the needs became more apparent? It was more of an organic
piece of it because if you think about it, it was like if you go back to the very beginning of the pandemic, Every city in Canada pretty much declared a homelessness outbreak.
They declared an addictions outbreak, like an emergency, right? They declared food sovereignty emergencies, gender-based violence emergencies.
I mean, since that time, of course, We have war, we have tariffs, we have just incredible pressures on Canada, right? We're now building infrastructure projects to offset all of these things.
That doesn't even count social isolation or loneliness that is going to cause a lot of death for people.
But the biggest issue is the gray tsunami that is overwhelming the health care industry or that will literally lead to unemployment because they simply can't afford to live anymore.
So how do we deal with all of those issues? And I think that was really what we started looking at.
And for us, I go back to what Einstein really said, you know, the definition of insanity is expecting a different outcome from the exact same process.
People are saying we need to fix these things, but no one's really looking at how to do that.
When we looked at the definition of it, it's really about partnership, working together to create outcomes we both care about.
It's all corporate pyramids, right? Indigenous is all about circles, working together within that circle piece.
Help people find housing afterwards, and then help them with wealth building.
And if you do those like four things, then all we have to do at that point is it leads to prosperity and it leads to wellbeing.
And if we go back to the beginning of that, let's take a look at all four of those things in sequence.
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