Brock University Chancellor Shirley Cheechoo received an honorary membership to the University’s Beta Gamma Sigma chapter Thursday.

Beta Gamma Sigma is an international academic honours society that recognizes students in business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International.

Held within Brock’s Goodman School of Business, the honours society is comprised of undergraduate students in the top 10 per cent of their class and graduate students in the top 20 per cent of their class.

For Cheechoo, receiving the honorary membership was an opportunity for her to reflect on her own leadership journey as she addressed the 69 students just before they were officially welcomed to the society.

“My life was not easy,” she said. “I have struggled and overcome many obstacles and every day I forge ahead to accomplish one more day of hard work doing something I enjoy — working with the youth so that their dreams can come true and their voices heard across the land.”

Cheechoo told the students that as they look ahead to their future, they need to have the mindset of a leader.

“I believe that if we want to achieve in life, we have to learn to think, to behave like a leader,” she said. “To become a leader is a long life process of education, experimenting, developing and implementing. You are in control of your own destinies.”

Offering some advice to students, Cheechoo encouraged them to “leave here being committed to being happy revolutionaries.”

“It’s time for us to think big thoughts, propose big solutions, to take some of risks and to think in a more revolutionary way, to gently push back when people say, ‘that’s never going to happen here,’ or, ‘We don’t do it that way here,’ or, ‘That’s never going to work here.’ The most effective is the person who says, ‘I know things are tough, but we need to figure it out. Let’s work together and do things different and move forward,’” she said.

Cheechoo is an award-winning aboriginal-Canadian actress, playwright and filmmaker.

A member of the Cree tribe, she has won international acclaim for stage work and films that are shaped by her First Nations background, including honours at the Sundance Film Festival and the American Indian Film Festival.

The Chancellor lives on Manitoulin Island, where she runs the Weengushk Film Institute for aboriginal youth.

Cheechoo was joined at the ceremony by human resources Professor Mark Julien, who received the Beta Gamma Sigma Professor of the Year award.

The award is given to a Goodman professor who exemplifies the Beta Gamma Sigma values of honour, wisdom and earnestness.

The ceremony also honoured Goodman professors Tatyana Sokolyk and Wesley Helms with memberships in Beta Gamma Sigma.

A new batch of outstanding students were inducted into the Goodman School of Business Beta Gamma Sigma chapter Thursday.