New insurance services offered in Fort William First Nation

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — Orijinative founder Jacob Taylor, a Curve Lake citizen, is currently setting up a new office in Fort William to offer his insurance and other services to Indigenous clients. Taylor, who was recognized with the 2021 Faculty of Health Sciences Young Alumni Award at Western University, currently has four businesses under the Orijinative brand, including Orijinative Assurance and Orijinative Logistics.

“I just moved up here in December 2021,” Taylor says, noting that his partner has family in Thunder Bay and it is only a seven-hour drive from the University of North Dakota where he is doing his PhD studies, whereas his former home in Peterborough was a 24-hour drive. “I have an office there and we’re just going to be renovating and updating it over the next little while before it becomes public facing.”

Taylor says potential clients can reach him via the phone number, e-mail address and fillable form on the Orijinative website.

“I’ve been working with some of the non-profits here in Thunder Bay,” Taylor says. “As I moved up here, I’ve been finding a lot of traction in a number of my enterprises. As a tangent, I do logistics as well and I can move anything from origin to destination. Just a couple of weeks ago I shipped a potato tiller up to Sandy Lake.”

Taylor says he started up the Orijinative Assurance business in 2021 after learning that Indigenous people living on-reserve have high death and dismemberment rates, in particular for men in the 25-65 age range, during his Indigenous Health Sciences PhD studies at the University of North Dakota.

“At the same time on my social media, I was seeing a number of Go Fund Me requests for funerals within our Indigenous communities here in Ontario,” Taylor says. “And the studying of the … stats related to health outcomes led me to think health insurance and other medical insurance products will be really important for our community.”

Taylor says the business was set up with all the carriers in Canada to provide a “vast amount of options” for Indigenous community clients.

“And we set it up to have lower commissions,” Taylor says. “We also set it up to keep track of the claims every month to make sure that the costs are staying as low as possible for our clients. It’s been a really good experience being in the industry supporting First Nation non-profits so far to get group benefit insurance.”

Taylor says his “real passion” is to help provide individuals with coverage that helps with end-of-life expenses.

“Traditionally, we always had grand ceremonies for people’s crossovers into the Spirit World,” Taylor says. “As a result of historical inequalities, we just don’t have the financing available in many scenarios to honour end-of-life in the way that we had done in the past.”

Taylor says they chose the Orijinative Assurance wording because assurance is a classic British word for insurance that also means competence.

“It’s really like, ‘Rest assured that everything is taken care of’,” Taylor says. “You have an Indigenous party that’s going into the market and seeking the best opportunities in the market for Indigenous people.”

Taylor says he also has been working with drone technology for delivery services.

“I’m really interested in what remote piloted aircraft systems can do for First Nation community well-being, monitoring the ice roads, shipping critical health equipment, food supplies but also moving biological specimens out,” Taylor says. “So this area of the world is very fascinating for me as well.”