THUNDER BAY — The deputy grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation who was recently cleared of misconduct allegations says they centred around him questioning how the organization conducts business.
Bobby Narcisse was cleared of misconduct by an independent investigation, the final report of which was presented in closed session on Aug. 13 to NAN’s chiefs-in-assembly at the 2025 Keewaywin Conference. The territorial organization first received the investigator’s report in June, at which point all restrictions on Narcisse and his performing of his official duties were lifted.
“They centred around governance issues across Nishnawbe Aski Nation, how we run the corporation,” Narcisse told Dougall Media in an interview on Tuesday, adding that the conduct violations he was accused, and subsequently cleared of, “centred around my questioning of process.”
“I felt that — without getting into too much detail — that I was performing my fiduciary duties as an elected member of Nishnawbe Aski Nation by asking questions on various course of actions.”
A NAN spokesperson has told Newswatch the organization won’t comment further on the matter.
At issue, Narcisse said, was his push for a mandate from the NAN chiefs and a confirming resolution for an independent third-party review of the territorial organization’s corporate structure, bylaws and the roles and responsibilities of its elected officials moving forward.
“I felt that there was going to be structural changes going to be imposed at Nishnawbe Aski Nation back in September,” Narcisse said. “However, I felt that we needed a chiefs' resolution and a mandate to do so.”
That resolution would eventually come this past spring, he said.
“This is all I asked for, really, and so, up until then, we did not have a mandate to do this, in my opinion,” Narcisse said. “Through the spring assembly, through political discourse and then discussion at that assembly, the chiefs said that ‘yes, things have prompted that we need to have a review of Nishnawbe Aski Nation’ and there we have it.”
“We now have a resolution and a mandate to do this.”
Narcisse said an independent third party is being sought to conduct the structural review at NAN.
“We want to ensure that the third-party review is non-biased and it's coming in with a fresh lens to ensure that all aspects of the review will be looked at and examined, and that recommendations will be presented to chiefs-in-assembly,” he said.
Recommendations arising from Narcisse’s conduct investigation also point to changes in conflict resolution within the organization, specifically involving elders in the process, he said.
“As a First Nations organization, we always say that we should always move towards our traditional practices of problem solving (and) conflict resolution, and I was frustrated in the fact that that didn't happen in this case,” he said.
“For a First Nations organization to use a colonial system right off the bat, rather than talk in a circle, use our elders, and overcome these challenges that we face in a good, safe environment where we could speak freely … you’d think we’d be a model for that type of governance.”
