, Newfoundland and Labrador’s first licensed producer of cannabis, the workers on the job preferred speaking to her husband.
Ms. Hall has been steering the Corner Brook, N.L.-based craft cannabis company since 2018. She came to the industry with leadership experience in information technology, which is notoriously male-dominated. But she says she’s been surprised by the sexism in cannabis. Dianna Tarbell is general manager at Seven Leaf, a licensed producer of cannabis located in the Mohawk Reserve of Akwesasne.“The Mohawk community is a matriarchal society; I am surrounded by women leaders and there is not a glass ceiling or a gender bias,” says Ms. Tarbell, who has decades of leadership experience spanning gaming, energy and travel and tourism. “Only when you go off reserve and do some networking with others do you realize that’s not the case everywhere.
Meanwhile, treaty rights – which are federal – allow Indigenous retailers to engage in traditional economies. But retail licenses are issued by provinces, which leaves on-reserve storefronts in limbo.“I would love to have the opportunity to supply legally grown product to First Nation retailers, but they’ve been deprived of the economic development right of legal cannabis retail,” says Ms. Hall.