I can probably answer that, because I was there when it was established.

In 1995, the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs had a study on aboriginal veterans, which was co-chaired by the late Senator Len Marchand. One of their recommendations to the government was establishing a scholarship and bursary fund to commemorate the service of aboriginal veterans. This they did. They called for proposals from various organizations—an expression of interest to see who would be prepared to administer the fund. The organization that succeeded was the Canadian Native Arts Foundation, which at the time was chaired by John Kim Bell. It was a small organization raising money to support aboriginal artists.

Subsequently, when we took over the fund, we realized it could not be used strictly for arts. It had to be for a broad variety of scholarships and disciplines. When we did that, we couldn't call ourselves the Canadian Native Arts Foundation; we had to call ourselves something else. We came up with the concept of the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, because at the time, we were also sponsoring the achievement awards now known as the Indspire awards.

Some years ago, we changed our name again to “Indspire”—I-N-D for “indigenous” and S-P-I-R-E for “inspiration”. We found that the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation was quite long and had to be translated into French, which was very difficult. The word “Indspire” does not need to be translated. We came up with a logo and a whole range of things to change our image.

We also reached out to industry and other organizations, and we changed our strategies for fundraising to the point where we're now able to raise a significant amount of funds not just from individual donors but also from corporations, businesses and various departments of the government. We—

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