00:00:01
Robin Stickley: Did you know that Indigenous peoples in North America were among the first people on the planet to mine metal and fashion it into tools or that within pot latch economies copper items rise in value each time they're purchased, ceremonially presented, strategically resold, or given away? Today, I'm inside the world-famous Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia learning about the connection between Indigenous cultures and mining, and it turns out it's a deep one. 

The latest research suggests Indigenous peoples on this continent worked pure copper ore nearly 10,000 years ago. Today, many nations are reconnecting with that proud tradition by partnering with the mining industry to develop projects on their territory, but forging those relationships and ensuring they're truly equitable doesn't come without its challenges.
 
I'm Robin Stickley and this is Why We Mine, presented by Teck. This season, we're exploring some of the biggest challenges facing the mining industry and our society as a whole with a focus on themes like trust and transparency, sustainability, critical minerals, reconciliation, and much more. In this episode, we're going to tackle one of the most challenging, nuanced, and important topics on that list, how the mining industry can rebuild and repair its relationship with Indigenous communities around the world. After all, Indigenous peoples have been mining and using metals for quite literally millennia, and their knowledge, skills, and stewardship of the land are equally critical to our shared future. And a quick warning here, some sensitive topics come up in the conversation including trauma, suicide, and residential schools. So please take care and to access support for you or for others. See the show notes for resources. Now let's dig in.
 
The relationship between Indigenous peoples and resource-based industries has historically not been a healthy one, but today mining is the largest private sector industrial employer of Indigenous peoples in Canada on a proportional basis. Today I'm pleased to introduce two people who are intimately familiar with both sides of that proverbial coin. Christy Smith is Senior Vice President of Indigenous Engagement and Human Environment at Falkirk Environmental Consultants. John Desjarlais is Executive Director of the Indigenous Resource Network. Christy and John, thanks so much for being here and welcome to Why We Mine.

00:02:46
John Desjarlais: My pleasure.

00:02:47
Christy Smith: Yeah, exciting.

00:02:48
Robin Stickley: We like to give listeners a chance to get to know our guests right off the bat, so why don't we start with a little bit of background from each of you. Tell us a little bit about yourselves, your roles and how you landed there.

00:02:59
Christy Smith: Yeah, sure. First and foremost, I'm from Comox First Nation. I would say I've been working in engagement mostly in the mining industry for my entire career of probably 26 years now. And about five years ago, there was a group of us consultants that got together and founded Falkirk Environmental Consultants, which I'm the Senior Vice President of. But really my work has evolved I think through the last little bit just because of the important focus that has been in the background for so long in mining, and that's in the human environment and really the Indigenous government-to-government sphere.

00:03:40
Robin Stickley: And John.

00:03:41
John Desjarlais: John Desjarlais, I'm Cree-Metis from Northeastern Saskatchewan, Kaministikominahikoskak, Island of the Big Trees, which is Cumberland House. It's a historic settlement. My experience with mining is I think it would be about that 23, 24 year mark, 17 years directly working for a mining company in a variety of capacities, variety of roles, environmental, radiation protection. It was a nuclear company, a uranium mining company, and maintenance and reliability engineering. I was a general contractor and so serving energy and mining organizations and economic development as well too, which led me to the Indigenous Resource Network, a collection of people like us who worked in industry but are Indigenous, very much connected to our culture and identity. How do we move discourse forward? There's a sensationalization about Indigenous sentiment and the public forum is, how do we make that a little more objective? And what we felt was a little more realistic and draw those things closer together, government, industry, and Indigenous people, and bring the public along.

00:04:45
Robin Stickley: Happy to have you both. I want to start, Christy, by asking about the book. You co-wrote the book. I've got my signed copy here next to me, which I've been thoroughly enjoying. It's called Weaving Two Worlds: Economic Reconciliation Between Indigenous Peoples and the Resource Sector. What was the need that you were addressing in writing it?

00:05:05
Christy Smith: Well, first and foremost, I should say, being that we come from an oral background, actually developing something in the written form was quite intimidating. And so a lot of the times, I'm just reiterating all those things that were in the book to clients and to companies, and I was like, "We need to document some of these best practices in the written form so that people can take it and they can learn from it." It's a pretty simple read, but it gives some good best practices and thoughts and brings awareness really into self-reflection, because every time we're engaging with even just your neighbor, how are you coming to that interaction?
 
And I think that's a really important thing in the industry where there's sometimes a lot of fear from proponents to, how do I start this conversation? Am I going to get yelled at? Is there historical legacies? And there is, and there's a lot of conversation that's held before you actually get into the conversation about the company and the project at hand. So I think it was just really trying to give a first step to those that just needed some backup as well.

00:06:18
Robin Stickley: It's interesting you talk about that fear. It's almost like a fear of rejection in these relationships in those initial stages of engagement. John, is that something that you're familiar with?

00:06:29
John Desjarlais: Absolutely. There's a way to go yet. And so we've closed that gap, but in terms of understanding Indigenous communities and proponents and understanding some of those realities, socioeconomic and culture, I think in the past usually development just happened regardless of communities and those realities. But now, there's jurisprudence, but there's also a desire, which is really exciting. And so organizations are not just being forced. They're wanting to develop those relationships in earnest. How do they do that and how do you reconcile past practice? How does a company who has had a poor relationship establish a whole new relationship? What does that look like in engaging with those communities, engaging with people? How do you make those steps? How do you heal? How do you fix? But I mean, if it's a new relationship, how do you engage in that?
 
And there's some distrust, but Indigenous people are fairly forgiving. I think the truth and reconciliation process is a testament to that Indigenous people wanting to move forward. But yeah, absolutely, there's that trepidation. There's that fear, there's rejection, and so the business, of course, is tied up with it. And so there's still a lot of complications, but I think resources like Christy's book are incredible and to be able to understand that context and then start to move forward.

00:07:42
Robin Stickley: Yeah, I'm learning so much myself in reading the book and in just doing a deep dive into some of these topics, because I think for some of us it's, well, wait a second, isn't this just about business? But it's not. It's about so much more. It's really about relationships.

00:07:55
John Desjarlais: Absolutely. It's relationship and relationship first and about building trust, and then everything follows from there. Western ideology is about transaction, it's about business, about profit. If we can establish those things, then we can build a relationship that's a really fundamental difference, and you establish that relationship and everything comes through there. And there's distrust in that process. How do I know, how do I manage risk, and how do I know we're going to make money? You will. But if you prioritize relationships, that's the real value.

00:08:23
Robin Stickley: You've both talked about this idea of the seven generations mindset and how it could help reconciliation between mining and Indigenous communities. Maybe for listeners who aren't familiar, what is this seven generations mindset? How does that work?

00:08:47
John Desjarlais: Sure, I'll take a stab first and then I'll pass it over to Christy. In terms of development, in terms of decision-making, the decisions we make today, will they affect seven generations into the future? And so if you look at that from a mining context, if we're going to develop a mine, what are those environmental impacts? Are we managing them seven generations out, but also in terms of not just environmental sustainability, but livelihood and wealth creation? Is that going to move through seven generations? And so it's less of, what's our quarterly dividend? What's our annual return? It's what is the total impact and is it going to extend out? When it's a framework for thinking longer term, past the immediate, past making a decision now, past rising stock prices for IPOs and things like that, we're here, there's long-term impacts. Are we making sure that we're managing the detrimental, but we're also maximizing the positive in terms of that sustainable long-term gain?

00:09:43
Robin Stickley: Chris, you were thinking about what the world looks like and what we think would benefit a world that's more than 100 years away. That's an interesting idea.

00:09:53
Christy Smith: Well, I think if you plan that way and you manage that way, and that's the foundation of that teaching, is that you're taking care of the current situation, but you're managing it for the future. I think some of the issues that we see in the processes is that a mine can come in for a very short term and be gone. The nations that are around that site are there forever. So the concept of applying the seven generation lens, it's really important, but I think it is also sometimes a real struggle in that, okay, we're here for 20 years. How do we apply this seven generation teaching and what does that look like? What is the legacy that this project can support and help seven generations to come? So it's a really valuable teaching and I think it should be applied, but I do see the struggles of trying to apply it for every project.

00:10:50
Robin Stickley: How do we reconcile this long view, this seven generations mindset on this side? And then, of course, there's this urgency, specifically around critical minerals, specifically around green energy transition. And so are those two things fundamentally opposed to each other? How do you reconcile that?

00:11:11
Christy Smith: There is a critical mineral requirement in the world, we see that, but nobody's slowing down in that sense of urgency to build that relationship to understand those teachings and how they can be applied. I think too many times there are a misunderstanding of how communities work and how it's not only the mining project that is their front and center focus, it's mental health. There's other things that are impacting our communities that need addressing. And I think that's where the disconnect seems to be, is just understanding what the nations are actually managing and how to build that relationship and have those discussions. And what level of urgency are you using, if that makes sense?
There's a sense of urgency, and I'm not discounting that. It's just, where's that balance? And if you apply too heavy a sense of urgency, you're going to wreck that relationship. So you need to have some sort of balance piece there. And I think part of the issue with a critical mineral strategy is that we understand that we need to be moving forward this way, but where is the disconnect that's going to occur? Where is the distress that's going to grow?

00:12:23
John Desjarlais: Yeah, and a couple points to that. I was at a working group recently with bureaucrats, with diplomats across the border and with industry, and we talked about national security and regional security, and we talked about a lot of these things. And when I sat back and then I was asked, what do Indigenous communities think? I was like, "I wish we had the luxury of thinking about energy security and world security. We're still dealing with abject poverty." It's not to lessen the importance of a national strategy and the importance of security, but Indigenous people need to be brought in that conversation. But at the same time, we need to bring Canada even deeper into the conversation of abject poverty, and then there needs to be responsibility on either side. But I see it being reconciled in terms of that view of sustainability. How do we get critical minerals out of the ground quicker without compromising on integrity of process, integrity of consultation? It's that view of sustainability.
 
And so in my experience, things in the past were about right now, and so when you develop workforce and training and development or community development plans as it relates to mining, those need to have a longer outlook. And not that they're going to cost more, they just need to think differently as opposed to right now, what does our spend look like right now in business? And we got to look at the sustainability of that. And same thing with the environmental side. And so when we're developing those relationships, when we're building those plans to build mines, exploring and build mines, we need to think about what that relationship with the community looks like in perpetuity with that development.
 
The community just needs to be brought into that process, empowered in that way. And so I find that they want to support it. They want to support the regulatory process, make it more efficient. And so I see sustainability in seven generations being reconciled with the urgency to develop minerals. We just need to make it more prevalent and commonplace, common practice. It can be done. It's being done. We've just got to make it more common.

00:14:13
Robin Stickley: The priorities sound like they may be inherently different though on both sides, is what you're saying?

00:14:19
John Desjarlais: Absolutely. And so when we think about development and we think about investment and building a mine, there's an end date. It's a project. Even though we're exploring, we're finding, we're developing, we're producing, and we're done. And usually, the government then takes responsibility for those in terms of monitoring and perpetuity. Then it becomes a public issue. But development is usually private. It's usually investment. It's organizations. It's companies that are investing in that. And so that's the pivot or the shift is, what does that relationship look like? And I've heard developers say this, and it's really inspiring that people are getting it, "We want to leave those communities better off because of our development, not worse off."
 
And so there's a way to think seven generation, there's a way to reconcile it. So when you're developing through that entire operational life cycle, are we leaving the community better off? Are these choices leaving the community better off? Is there more skills and capacity and resources? Have we addressed some of those socioeconomic issues? It's such a different way of looking at that relationship as opposed to let's send them some jobs, some contracts, some dollars, and then hands off. And then that builds confidence and trust, builds relationships with those communities, and they're champions for development if they're involved in that way.

00:15:32
Robin Stickley: Christy, when I say the words true partnership, what does that mean to you in the context of involving Indigenous peoples in resource extraction? Is that a realistic goal?

00:15:45
Christy Smith: Oh yeah, I think so. And it depends on the nation's approach. Across Canada, we have a very wide variety of approaches to mining. Some nations don't even want to participate at all because they're consenting to something that is against their Indigenous laws, all the way to nations that are fully participating as partners in mining exploration and into the development phase. So I think true partnership depends, and it's being structured so differently across Canada right now. The one thing that's really interesting to me is that it's evolving so quickly that we see new different types of partnerships come out every few months. Just reflecting back on my book for a little bit, I had a bunch of case studies in the back, we developed a bunch of case studies, and we are way beyond those and really there's 10 more case studies we could write this month alone on partnership.
 
Yeah, it's just an evolving place. I think the takeaway I would say is that the partnership has to be honored by both sides. It really has to be a true partnership. It has to be wanted by both sides. And I think it's easy for a company to come in and say, "I want a partnership," where the nation, we got chief and council, but they represent a whole community and sometimes the community doesn't necessarily want that partnership or sees a different view of that partnership. So there's a little bit more intricacies I think from the nation side that have to get work through to have that true partnership.

00:17:26
Robin Stickley: And there's also, it goes without saying perhaps, but no one size fits all here, correct? Each nation may have its own approach, as you said.

00:17:35
Christy Smith: Yeah, 100%.

00:17:37
Robin Stickley: John, did you have anything you wanted to add in on that one?

00:17:40
John Desjarlais: Yeah, a few thoughts. There's so many different type of business relationships that reflect partnerships, but I think some of the tenets of partnerships and good partnerships, meaningful partnerships are around values. There's got to be honesty within that partnership in the risks and the rewards, and those partnerships are not always relationships of equals, but they need to be equitable. We need to respect some of those differences and support each other. It's like anything else. And so, what do we know? What are we good at? And recognizing that those communities have incredible, not just leverage, but there's incredible depth to them. Once we see past stereotypes and anything like that, there's incredible value in developing those relationships. And so there's some things there that I think underpin good partnerships, that honesty, that humility, learning together and sharing in some of that together.
 
From a business perspective, partnerships where you see sharing in equity where communities own alongside with investment organizations. Then there's a deep business relationship and a deep business partnership where you share in the risk and reward and you share in the responsibility of governance and engaging in the regulatory process and right through mine development. Those reflect deep, meaningful partnerships, but they cascade all the way down to what Christy mentioned. There's communities that, in terms of the spectrum of their developments, they're on that process around that journey where their partnership might be just simply contracts or they might not even be in support of certain development, and we have to respect that sovereignty of those nations. True partnership is not treating your partner as a stakeholder or a process or a box to check, but as someone that you make decisions with and you share in that responsibility and you share in the rewards and the risk.

00:19:30
Robin Stickley: I want to shift over to workforce and labor for a second now with you both. In terms of the hiring and the retention of the workforce within Indigenous communities and tapping into some very specific skill sets, what does the resource sector need to be bearing in mind and need to understand in terms of cultural differences that apply here to anything, even a job interview and how that goes?

00:19:54
John Desjarlais: Yeah, absolutely, there's so many things. In terms of recruitment, job interviews, it's really interesting. Expecting people will have cell phones and you can call them or immediate landline, we heard a company say, "We had a tough time engaging with the resumes," and everything like that. Some of them didn't have phone numbers, some of them didn't have emails, and we had a tough time. And so they created a process where it was really cool where they called the community and the people engaged with the community center. And then there was a way to follow up with that in terms of recruitment. But even stepping back, some of the advisement that we give is, really, if this is about economic reconciliation and we say it is then we have to recognize that we're recruiting from not just our business needs. We need to recognize that several Indigenous people are carrying a lot of trauma, intergenerational trauma, carrying some of those socioeconomic impacts in terms of our connection to suicide and suicide ideation and health. There's all these social issues, so when we're recruiting I think we need to be sensitive to that.
 
And a really good example is more policy was adapted to reflect some of those realities were bereavement leave. And so you see labor code and bereavement leave. It's a nuclear family, but that's not the reality in Indigenous communities. There's kinship ties. They extend out. I could be just as close with my second or third cousin. If we lost them, 
I couldn't take time off work. Policies that reflect being able to engage in ceremony and sustenance and things like that, in terms of recruitment and retention, there's so much more I think we can be doing as an industry to engage with Indigenous people in community. Not to fit them and shoehorn them into the labor code and standards and everything, but to adapt policies so that it's more reflective of and sensitive to some of the things I think that Canada was stripping away over the last 100 years.

00:21:40
Christy Smith: Those are good. I was also thinking, I was just recently on a project, a couple projects actually, where this was disclosed that the mine site or the development is offering nation members a lot of money to go work there, and opportunities, which is great, but what happens is a little bit of that depletion of some of those members were working in administration and supporting the community as a whole. And so, on the one hand, there's an opportunity, but sometimes the company needs to understand that you're almost resource depleting a community as well, especially if they're close by.
 
So understanding I think those responsibilities in some way and how to help that piece is really important. Everybody has their own option to work wherever they want, but I have seen some of that issue arise when you've taken the lands manager, put them at the site, and now you're not getting a response on your permit application. So it's a catch-22 in recruiting.

00:22:43
Robin Stickley: Eye-opening answers. There are so many things that the mining sector does need to consider. I want to talk trust. As you know, this is a big issue. It's also been one of the major themes of the podcast, Why We Mine and we wanted to really focus in on it this season. Trust between the mining industry and Indigenous communities, how has it been fractured in the past?

00:23:07
John Desjarlais: Yeah. So I think development happened regardless of who's around what rights, what land use and anything like that with minimal engagement in the past. And so agreements, benefit agreements, anything like that have only become commonplace and only started to I think surface and manifest 15, 20 years ago and weren't commonplace then. The permitting process was incredibly light in terms of inclusion and engagement of Indigenous people. And as we saw duty to consult evolve over the last 30 years, it was about economic growth. It was a very utilitarian approach. We need those resources. Government gives access to those resources. Companies come, stimulation. And there was very little thought given to communities that were in the proximity of that development. And so when you have a development happen like that with no respect in that relationship of Indigenous communities, there was never any trust to begin with, to be had. And so there was never an opportunity to develop that trust.
 
So it was a very distrusting relationship or where there's a severe environmental impact, tailings facilities, to an abandonment of all sorts of facilities and Indigenous people still trying to figure out how to not only remediate and mitigate, but how to exercise rights around those areas. So that's the historical context and, as we move through that, things have evolved drastically. I don't know about rapidly, but certainly drastically over a period of time. And it was a very transactional relationship and it stayed that way. And Indigenous people felt that and felt undermined and felt it wasn't an equitable relationship. It wasn't a relationship. We're talking one or two generations, so that memory's there. People still remember it.

So we have a lot to overcome. But, again, I come back to that point. Indigenous people don't want to carry that. They want to move forward in more meaningful ways, and I've seen more forgiveness and I've seen more understanding that there's a whole new group of developers with a different sentiment and a different mindset and a different level of expectation how to involve those communities. And I'm glad I'm seeing communities see that and trust is being built quicker. Not having to carry some of those legacy issues. But they're still there, they're still wounds, and I think that's where we came from historically.

00:25:20
Christy Smith: Yeah, there's still a lot of box ticker companies out there, and I think it's not that we don't talk to other nations to nations or nations don't speak to other nations about certain players in the industry or the distress. So I think there's still a lot of work to do in that area. I think there is a lot of trauma associated to a lot of these sites because a lot of the sites that are currently operating or have historically been left behind came about at a time where our communities were in residential schools and they were being taken away. And so there's really that trauma associated with a lot of this infrastructure. I'm just thinking in B.C. damming of some of the waterways and things like that where people were displaced occurred all around that same time. And so I think the trauma that our members are maneuvering through and healing from also is associated with development and with infrastructure that's been put in place. And that's a big deal. That's a hard thing to overcome.

00:26:25
Robin Stickley: So how is industry rebuilding that trust now? And maybe you could speak to what can be done or what needs to be done going forward to keep building on those more positive relationships?

00:26:38
Christy Smith: What I'm finding through a lot of the work I'm doing is we spend a lot of time talking about that trauma, and I think sometimes companies are uncomfortable in that space and want to just move forward and talk about what are the opportunities and talk about the positive. And I think we need to have those stories be told. And sometimes it means our elders are telling those stories three or four times before actually wanting to talk about the project. So I think time is a factor. Even though we're in a sense of urgency, we need to listen and we need to allow people to heal through words and stories. It's going to be a process and for every other person it's going to be something different. It's going to be different from my generation versus my father's generation versus my grandmother's generation, but I think we're on the path of healing and this is part of it.

00:27:33
John Desjarlais: Yeah, I absolutely echo that sentiment. We talk a lot about reconciliation, economic reconciliation, but it's truth and reconciliation and it needs to be truth before reconciliation. Indigenous people need to feel and not hold responsible, but they need to feel people understand that truth piece in terms of the trauma, in terms of that past relationship. Just want to be heard from that perspective and that's why I absolutely echo that sentiment. And there needs to be cultural humility with proponents and developers and organizations learning and giving space to Indigenous people to express that, to express ourselves as Indigenous people.
 
I remember talking some years ago and said things really changed for me when I felt I was no longer going to leave the Indian at the door. I was going to bring my whole self through every opportunity. And again, it's being heard and seen as an Indigenous person and that not being polarizing for anyone and just being accepted in that way. And I think any opportunity you can operationalize that through relationship policy or anything like that gives space to Indigenous people so that we self- determine and participate on our terms and we support on our terms, we integrate into systems on our terms, we help innovate and evolve on our terms. I think the more that, that happens, trust is built quicker and quicker and quicker.

00:28:49
Robin Stickley: John and Christy, this has been such an incredibly important conversation. I want to say a heartfelt thank you to both of you for sharing your wisdom with us today. Thank you so much.

00:28:56
Christy Smith: No problem.

00:28:57
John Desjarlais: Kinânaskom'tin. Thank you. Thank you so much.

00:29:01
Robin Stickley: My guests have been Christy Smith, Senior Vice President of Indigenous Engagement and Human Environment at Falkirk Environmental Consultants, and John Desjarlais, Executive Director of the Indigenous Resource Network. As I wrap up a day of learning inside the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, this is the part of the podcast where I usually share my thoughts and reflections, but in the spirit of today's conversation, we're going to do things a little differently this time and give the last word to our guests. I asked both John and Christy what they would like you to take away from this episode.

00:29:37
John Desjarlais: I think an important takeaway is: have that openness and that humility and that understanding that there's incredible opportunity and capability with Indigenous people to participate more meaningfully. I've got to do some incredibly cool things, but there was key people within that journey that accepted me for who I was, didn't try to create something out of me, gave me a space to be who I was and listen to me. So I ask people to open up your heart and open up your mind and have some humility and listen.

00:30:07
Christy Smith: I think the most important takeaway that I could leave here is probably take the time to actually learn about who you're engaging with. Listen to the words, but also listen to the silence. I don't think people pay a lot of attention to silence in conversation or silence in responses. So it's really understanding that conversation and really understanding the individual that you're speaking with.

00:30:36
Robin Stickley: I'm Robin Stickley, and this is Why We Mine, brought to you by Teck. I'd like to acknowledge we touched on some difficult topics today. If you or anyone you know is struggling or you'd like to learn more about anything that came up in our conversation, you can find resources in the show notes of this episode. Thanks so much for listening, and thanks also to our talented production team. Our senior producer is Reaon Ford. Luke Batiot is our sound engineer, and our project lead is Maria St. Aubin. Additional support provided by JAR Audio. Until next time.