John Kim Bell

John Kim Bell (born October 8, 1952) is Canada’s first Indigenous symphony-orchestra conductor, the founder of the country’s precedent-setting National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation (today known as Indspire) and the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (today known as the Indspire Awards) and one of Canada's leading energy resource consultants representing First Nations. Bell is a decorated Canadian and an internationally recognized leader and activist in the arts, philanthropy and First Nations resource development.

Bell is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario. He was the national recipient of the Royal Bank Award for Canadian Achievement in 1988, a major Canadian award carrying a cash price of $250,000 and has received three medals from the Queen, among other citations for his ground-breaking work. He was named the 2003 national outstanding cultural leader by the Canadian Conference of the Arts in 2003. In 2005, he served as one of five Canadian advisors to Prince Charles and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal Conservatory of Music in 2007. The Indigenous community has recognized Bell's contribution to the advancement of Indigenous peoples; he has been honoured with three Eagle feathers throughout his career.

Family and education

Early life John Kim Bell was born on the Kahnawake Reserve in Quebec, Canada in 1952. He is the eldest child of Don Eagle and Beth Hamilton, the former a Mohawk wrestler from Canada deemed "the most famous Indian in the world." In the late 1940s, Eagle became the AWA World Heavyweight Champion and, in the 1950s, he starred on The Tonight Show monthly. Bell’s mother, Beth Hamilton Bell, was a model and writer who ran a radio program in the United States. Hoping to meet Don Eagle, she arranged an interview with him; six weeks later, the pair eloped.

Beth Hamilton Bell moved to the Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve to be with Eagle during an era when inter-racial marriage was illegal. After the birth of Bell and his brother, the marriage dissolved and Hamilton Bell took John Kim and his brother to the United States where they lived with Hamilton Bell’s parents in Columbus, Ohio. Bell and his brother returned to the Kahnawake Reserve in the summers of their youth but faced equal alienation there as they did in Columbus.

Bell began playing the piano at age eight and later studied violin and saxophone. Talented from an early age, he was playing the piano on local television talent shows at age ten and winning state piano competitions. As a teen he was hired by John Kenley to play piano for the Kenley Players summer theatre company which led to his appointment as associate conductor of the international company A Chorus Line. By the age of 18 Bell was conducting numerous Broadway, ballet and operatic productions, which included headliners Gene Kelly and Lauren Bacall.

Education and early career Bell attended Ohio State University from which he received a Bachelor of Music in 1976. He went on to attend the Academia Musica Chigiana in Sienna, Italy and later apprenticed with Zubin Mehta at the New York Philharmonic. Having researched and not found any existing Indigenous arts programs, Bell was inspired to establish the Canadian Native Arts Foundation (CNAF) to educate and promote Indigenous artists. In the Land of the Spirits, the first all-Indigenous ballet to tour nationally. The ballet premiered at the National Arts Centre in 1992 and enjoyed an immensely successful run. The NAAF is now known as Indspire, while the NAAA has been renamed to the Indspire Awards.

Consultancy From 1988 to 2005 Bell was president of management company Ariontha Inc. In 2006 he founded Bell & Bernard Limited. In 2009 he helped established the Enbridge School Plus Program, which supports extracurricular activities and enrichment programming in First Nations schools. Today, Mr. Bell is one of Canada's leading Indigenous energy resource consultants representing First Nations and the President & CEO of Bell & Bernard Limited.

Board appointments Bell has been a member of several boards including at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, and the Aboriginal Human Resource Development Council of Canada. He has also sat on the boards of the Canadian Institute for Health Research, the Federal Task Force on Professional Training in the Cultural Sector, and the City of Toronto's 2008 Olympic bid.

Awards and honours Member of the Order of Canada (1990) and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1997. In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of Ontario. Royal Bank Award for Canadian Achievement in 1998.