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Grace Elliott-Nielsen pauses in the midst of a busy day to consider the famous people she has met over the years. "John Denver, he was very special," she says of the late American singer. "Very genuine."

The same has been said of Ms. Elliott-Nielsen herself, a 63-year-old aboriginal activist whose work has brought her into contact with international figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, media mogul Ted Turner, primatologist Jane Goodall, and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

They might seem unlikely acquaintances for the head of a small native friendship centre in Nanaimo, B.C. But Ms. Elliott-Nielsen's reputation for human rights achievements and holistic health care have earned her a place on the global stage. In 1990, for example, Mr. Gorbachev invited her to the annual State of the World conference in San Francisco and she became a regular at the gathering for several years.

A prominent member of the Chemainus First Nation, she was a veteran social worker before deciding to devote her life to the needs of the native community through Nanaimo's Tillicum Haus Native Friendship Centre, where she has been executive director for 22 years. For the past 11 years, she has also been president of the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, which help native people who move to cities from reserves.

Ms. Elliott-Nielsen, who oversees 127 staff and 39 programs at Tillicum, created the first aboriginal health clinic and adult basic education program in British Columbia. She also developed the first aboriginal substance-abuse counselling program, and was a co-founder of the aboriginal arm of the Building Better Babies program, which helps impoverished pregnant women.

"I was always kind of a do-gooder," she says with a laugh. "I've always believed in a holistic program — body, mind and spirit. And I've always believed you can only bring people as far as you've come yourself."

Today, she is being honoured in the Champions category of the Toronto-based Women's Executive Network's annual list of the top 100 most powerful women in Canada.

Those who know the soft-spoken Ms. Elliott-Nielsen describe her as wise, caring, and relentless.

Goody Niosi, a Nanaimo writer who wrote about her in a 2002 book, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, says Ms. Elliott-Nielsen doesn't talk about what she's going to do — she just does it. "And does it so quietly and so gently and so unassumingly that people don't realize that she's going to do something until it's already done, and it's too late to stop her," Ms. Niosi says.

Ms. Elliott-Nielsen has been recognized with an honorary doctorate in 1999, the Order of British Columbia in 2000 and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003. But such accolades continue to surprise her.

"Gosh, I just keep going and going, and working and trying to make changes and then I think, 'Why me? I'm sure other people do the same thing,'" she says.

Her work is so much a part of her life that her family, which includes seven grandchildren, has made it part of theirs as well. Her husband Del Nielsen, a non-native carpenter, is known to everyone at Tillicum, as are her two daughters, Tammie Wylie and Inga Nielsen-Cooper. The whole family pitches in at fundraisers and gatherings, and delivers items to the needy.

Before Ms. Elliott-Nielsen began aiding members of the aboriginal community at Tillicum centre, she helped set up B.C.'s first program for sexually abused children. She recalls working with a group of boys who had been abused, and taking them to her home for a special Christmas-time lunch.

"One boy, he was about 11 or 12, said, 'How come your husband lets you bring home such bad kids?'" she recalls. "I said, 'I don't see you as being bad kids.'"

Ms. Elliott-Nielsen knows what it is to feel alienated. When she was in Grade 1, she was beaten by a much older child who taunted her for being aboriginal. She turned off her parents' alarm clock hoping they would sleep in and she would miss school.

She grew up in Ladysmith, 20 kilometres south of Nanaimo, with three older siblings on a cattle and vegetable farm bordering the Chemainus reserve. The journey to school getting up at 4:30 a.m. and taking a boat across a bay; eventually their mother decided to teach the children at home. After nine years of home schooling, young Grace entered the public high school.

After graduation, she studied to become a nurse and then opened a fitness centre and taught yoga in Nanaimo.Later, she changed gears and earned a degree in social work at Nanaimo's Malaspina University College. In the mid-1980s, she decided to focus on her own native community and the problems she saw there.

"I saw so many young people who were totally lost," she says. "Some of the students we've had come through here have their doctorates now ... I feel so proud that I would have a little part in that for supporting them."

Pedro Corpuz, 40, has known Ms. Elliott-Nielsen since he was 28. Because he was painfully shy, she convinced him to take part in Tillicum's personal empowerment program several times over the years. "Tillicum is probably my second family," he says.

Leanne Berard also sees her as a family figure. When Ms. Berard first turned to Tillicum 10 years ago, she was pregnant, single and scared. Today she works at the centre as a secretary, and credits Ms. Elliott-Nielsen for getting her there.

"The world could use more people like Grace — people who are in positions of power and don't abuse it," Ms. Berard says.

When it is put to Ms. Elliott-Nielsen that it would be a sad day for her staff, clients and many admirers if she were to retire, she responds with a characteristic laugh:

"I told my board the other day, I'm going to be like the Pope. When I'm 95 I'll sit up in the window ... and wave at everybody going by."

Special to The Globe and Mail