This elaborate system is an example of what conservationists call “ecosystem services.” In addition to sustaining life on Earth, these services generate all manner of valuable goods; commercial fishing and coastal logging, for instance, have poured tens of billions into B.C.’s economy over the past century. But those profits have come at a steep environmental cost, illustrating an age-old cycle with a vicious feedback loop: nature provides the essentials for a functioning society and healthy economy, from clean water and food to energy and wood. The more we harvest, the richer we get; the richer we get, the more we consume; the more we consume, the faster nature unravels.

The most obvious solution, protecting large swaths of nature from resource-hungry humans, simply reverses the problem. Instead of making money, environmental conservation renounces profit. Ban logging to protect a forest? Okay, who will pay next month’s rent for those loggers? Where will that money come from? And what will the rest of us use to build our houses?

In the early 1980s, amid dawning global awareness of humanity’s collision course with the biosphere, the field of conservation finance emerged to tackle this conundrum. A blend of economics and ecology, the core goal of conservation finance is to harness free markets to pay for ecological protection.

Decades later, however, the original problem persists. It still costs money to protect nature. And if you follow most money far enough, you’ll arrive at a scene of environmental destruction. Wrecking one part of the world to save another is not a sustainable solution. To truly escape the vicious cycle, you’d have to make conservation profitable. Somehow, nature has to pay for itself.

Which brings us back to the coast of British Columbia, to a place called the Great Bear Sea.

A more intelligent resource economy

On June 25, the governments of British Columbia, Canada and 17 First Nations formally launched the Great Bear Sea initiative. It’s a marine sequel to the Great Bear Rainforest agreement of 2007, which invested $120 million in Indigenous-led conservation over 64,000 square kilometres of B.C.’s island-studded northern coastline. That deal converted a resource-loaded region the size of Ireland to ecosystem-based management – logging hasn’t stopped, but 70% of the Great Bear’s old growth is now permanently protected. More than 100 new businesses have been created (everything from small-scale forestry and ecotourism to solar power instalments, kelp farms and tug-boat operations) along with a thousand full-time jobs.

The Great Bear Sea initiative more than doubles that scale. It places 100,000 square kilometres of some of the world’s richest fishing waters under joint Indigenous-Crown authority and gives Coastal First Nations $335 million ($200 million from the federal government, $60 million from B.C. and $75 million from private donors) to build a new economy.

“Our leaders of the day knew the Great Bear Rainforest agreement was going to be a blueprint for us to continue on with this important work,” says Christine Smith-Martin, CEO of the Coastal First Nations coalition and a key negotiator of this new Great Bear Sea initiative. “We are the stewards of our territories. We’ve been able to measure how many new sustainable businesses our communities have grown since we signed that agreement. It’s not just us saying it. We’re actually tracking it.”

Over the next 20 years, Great Bear Sea funding is expected to seed 200 new businesses supporting 3,000 jobs in sustainable fisheries, manufacturing and processing, marine stewardship and research, transportation, ecotourism and more. The Great Bear Rainforest delivered a three-to-one return on its initial investment; this one is forecast to attract $750 million in future business investments.

We’ve been able to measure how many new sustainable businesses our communities have grown since we signed that agreement.

—Christine Smith-Martin, CEO, Coastal First Nations

A substantial portion of the funds will also go into expanding the network of Guardian Watchmen programs that monitor the coast, like a hybrid of biologist and coast guard. But the Great Bear agreements aren’t just aimed at protecting nature; they’re also designed to protect industry. The north coast isn’t being turned into a national park. Coastal First Nations depend on fishing and logging as much as non-Indigenous people do, supplying almost half the workforce of both industries.

In order to survive, those industries have to change. British Columbia, long a poster child of colonial resource extraction, has almost eaten through its entire ecological inheritance. Eighty percent of the province’s primary forest has already been logged, while salmon and herring populations are at less than a 10th of their pre-industrial abundance.

“We have to be a more intelligent resource economy,” says Nathan Cullen, B.C.’s minister of water, land and resource stewardship. “There’s some that choose to say we either have to maintain the practices of three generations ago or shut it all down. Those extremes are not at all where the solution lies. The environment is telling us we’re coming up against the limits of what you can do sustainably. Whether it’s climate change, declining salmon, more expensive forestry operations, forest fires, the list is pretty long in terms of the feedback that we’re getting.”

Cullen emphasizes three interconnected priorities guiding the provincial government: “Reconciliation over governance of the land. A historic protection of land and waters. And a much more sustainable natural resource economy. When we stand up good conservation projects, we have to keep our eye on all of those three primary elements at the same time.”

In the Great Bear Sea, that translates into an overall reduction of just 8% of the commercial catch, from salmon, halibut and cod to shellfish. But the remainder will be far more targeted than before. A network of biodiversity hot spots and vital spawning grounds, known as marine protected areas, will see tight restrictions placed over 30,000 square kilometres of ocean.

“Sometimes you hear people say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna shut down the coast’ – that’s not it at all,” Smith-Martin says. “We always lead these conversations with ‘The reason we are doing it is not just for us. It’s for you, too, so that you can pass on your boat to the next person in your family. If we don’t do these protected areas, you’re going to have nothing.’”

How nature can pay for itself

Expressing the value of life in dollar terms is a fraught enterprise; it calls to mind Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic as someone who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” On the other hand, it’s helped stop traditional economists from treating ecological collapse as an externality. And the numbers do tend to be eye-opening, even if they involve large margins of uncertainty.

A 1997 study published in Nature, for instance, concluded that global ecosystems provide between US$18 and $61 trillion worth of goods and services to civilization, roughly on par with the cash then circulating in the global economy. A 2010 analysis of the forests and wetlands surrounding Vancouver found that these provided $5.4 billion worth of ecosystem services per year. A 2022 study of Grindstone Creek, west of Toronto, discovered $2 billion worth of flood protection alone.

Figures like these underpin conservation finance, which has turned protecting nature into a global business worth some US$50 billion per year. There is now a dizzying array of international markets and financial mechanisms devoted to preserving ecosystems around the world. Carbon credits, conservation trust funds, resilience bonds, habitat mitigation banking, debt-for-nature swaps and too many more mouthfuls to name have helped bankroll the protection of countless ecosystems, from the cloud forests of Costa Rica to Zimbabwe’s Zambezi River.

What sets the Great Bear Sea fund apart is the direct involvement of Indigenous communities, and the fact that industry here is being reformed instead of cancelled. Nature-protection schemes have a long history of overlooking the people who actually live in said nature (usually Indigenous), often kicking them out to turn their home into a park. But the Great Bear Sea initiative was led from the outset by First Nations; their goal is to keep harvesting every possible resource from the region, just more sustainably than industry has up to now.

Sustainable harvests don’t deliver the short-term bonanza that comes from total liquidation, but if you can learn to live on that interest, you’ll never go bankrupt

The financial model itself is also unique. Half the Great Bear Sea fund is stored in a permanent endowment: money that generates interest, and you spend only the interest. This model of conservation finance has its own ungainly name: project finance for permanence, or PFP. The 2007 rainforest agreement was the first PFP in history; a handful of others have been implemented since, mostly in South America. Altogether, just over two million square kilometres of the earth’s surface – an area the size of Mexico – is now covered by PFPs.

“I would compare it to a private–public partnership,” says Eddy Adra, CEO of Coast Funds, a trust fund created to manage the money first delivered by the Great Bear agreements. “It’s a way of funding a large infrastructure project, where the large infrastructure project in this case is the conservation of a globally significant, ecologically significant territory.”

PFPs offer a good metaphor for the sustainable economy now coming into view on B.C.’s north coast. Think of an ecosystem as nature’s permanent endowment. Human industry can skim off the interest that accrues each year – a certain amount of salmon and oysters and spruce and cedar – but mustn’t dig too deep. That’s how nature pays for itself, with no need for a bailout. Sustainable harvests don’t deliver the short-term bonanza that comes from total liquidation, but if you can learn to live on that interest, you’ll never go bankrupt.

First Nations lived by that economic model for thousands of years before colonization; their leadership now is a defining characteristic of the Great Bear PFPs. “In a typical model, you would see global funders come in with conservation goals and work with government directly,” Adra says. Indigenous communities would be consulted near the end of the process only, if at all. “The Great Bear Sea PFP really flipped that upside down,” Adra says. “This was something the Nations had been developing for 20 years. And when the opportunity came along, they brought in their partners to the table to get this done.”

That opportunity was a rare confluence of provincial and federal priorities – a different kind of PFP, and every bit as crucial as the money. In 2019, British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in the world to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law; the Declaration Act requires B.C. to share decision-making authority over the land base with more than 200 First Nations across the province. Canada followed with a federal version two years later. These are now the only two governments on the planet to have gone beyond casting a symbolic vote for UNDRIP, turning the voluntary declaration into binding legislation. Their collaboration is crucial, since oceans fall under federal jurisdiction and forests are provincial.

Then in 2022, Canada hosted the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, where member countries agreed to protect 30% of their land and water by 2030. The federal government’s $200-million contribution to the Great Bear Sea comes from an $800-million fund created to meet that commitment.

“It’s not many countries where you have governments sit at the table and say, ‘Okay, Indigenous-led communities, you guys can lead this process and we’ll be partners,’” Smith-Martin says. “It’s a good road map for Indigenous communities, philanthropic communities, federal and provincial governments. How does this all work and what kind of commitment did it take to get here?”

As the ecological crisis deepens, that road map points the way to a new kind of treasure. The Great Bear Sea may be unique, but the history of extraction it’s working to reverse is all too universal. Citizens around the world, searching for a way out of their own vicious cycles, can now look to B.C.’s north coast and say, “X marks the spot.”

Arno Kopecky is a Vancouver-based journalist and author. His latest book is The Environmentalist’s Dilemma.

Reporting for this story was supported by the Sitka Foundation and the Science Media Centre of Canada.

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It started with drinking water around 30 years ago. A solar-powered electric pump drew water from the arid earth. Then came a tourism business with eco-camping that showcased the rugged countryside and a family-run bush-food plantation of quandong, a desert peach. They have 1,000 quandong trees, and the entire operation – from irrigation to sorting – is solar powered.

“For our family personally, renewables have been about us reclaiming our rights and living on country and being economically independent,” says Croker, a member of the Luritja Nation.

This is not generally the case in Australia, where Aboriginal people make up 3.8% of the population and struggle to assert a whole host of rights. That’s visible through the energy choices available to them: diesel generators that power larger Aboriginal communities spew noxious fumes in the middle of their towns, while transmission lines from large-scale renewable-energy projects bypass them en route to powering wealthier cities. With Australia setting ambitious goals to make its power supply 82% renewable by 2030, Croker set out to create an organization that would help advocate for a just energy transition – one that did not leave Aboriginal people out, nor leave them with meager scraps.

His research brought him to Canada, where Indigenous communities are the largest asset holders of clean energy projects after utility companies and the Crown. There, he found Indigenous Clean Energy (ICE), a not-for-profit organization that has been building capacity and expertise around clean energy and how to make it a tool for Indigenous sovereignty since 2016. Croker was attracted to ICE’s approach, which “turned the power dynamic on its head, having initiatives and government policy to be First Nations–led, which is the opposite of what we have in Australia.”

There are more than 200 renewable-energy projects – hydro, wind, solar and bioenergy – that have Indigenous participation in Canada, according to a report released by ICE in 2022. That includes sole ownership, co-ownership and defined financial benefits. Since 2017, the number of medium and large Indigenous clean energy projects has jumped by almost 30%. Hydro accounts for the biggest share (56.5%), followed by wind (22.9%), solar (11.8%), bioenergy (7.1%) and hybrid projects (1.7%). Small, community-scale energy systems dot the country. In April, the Ulkatcho First Nation in British Columbia announced it will construct the largest off-grid solar farm in the country, a $30-million project that will generate up to 70% of the electricity the community needs and dramatically reduce its diesel use, and in the process sell its energy to BC Hydro.

All of this is the result of decades of work going back to the early 2000s, when communities began pushing into the energy space, negotiating co-ownership of projects on ancestral lands and winning legal battles rooted in treaty rights that established that projects should include financial benefits for Indigenous communities. In 2019, ICE was officially incorporated as an independent organization. It has run several iterations of its Catalysts program, an intensive capacity-building program that gives participants the tools to make clean energy projects a reality, connecting them with coaches and mentors that address everything from energy planning to conservation and business management.

In 2020, ICE launched its Global Hub, intending to take its body of knowledge abroad to help other Indigenous Peoples with similar challenges.

“The lessons learned from so-called Canada we can share with our Indigenous kin around the world,” says Global Hub manager Daphne Kay, who is from Cowessess First Nation, on Treaty 4 Territory in Saskatchewan. “It’s not a silver bullet, it’s not a one size fits all, and our nation-to-nation relationship is about learning from each other.”

Australia was ICE’s first foray. It acted as a sister organization for the First Nations Clean Energy Network that Croker co-launched with Karrina Nolan, a Yorta Yorta woman. The organizations co-designed a PowerMakers program that led 32 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through training that included community engagement, fair partnership agreements, ownership models and policy negotiation. Croker says Australia is behind Canada when it comes to inclusion. The First Nations Clean Energy Network has tallied 15 energy projects with Aboriginal participation. While specific differences make progress more difficult – Aboriginal Peoples in Australia do not have treaty rights, for example – learnings around how to advocate with policy-makers have been instrumental, Croker says. “They helped us mobilize and organize.”

ICE’s work has also stretched into the Global South, to Colombia, where a delegation visited two Indigenous groups this year: a Cofán community in the southern department of Nariño and a Muisca community in the department of Boyacá, near the capital of Bogotá.

“We’ve been talking about decolonizing power and what doing decolonial support for our kin means,” says Freddie Huppé Campbell, ICE’s director of energy and climate and a Michif woman from the Ktunaxa Kinbasket territory, in British Columbia, who visited Colombia with Kay upon the invitation of the two communities. Part of that is moving outside of the colonial spaces of government and aid organizations and into territories, visiting homes and meeting families. Aura Balanta, an Afro Colombian activist and artist who helped guide the ICE delegation with a group called Grassroots Movement of Movements, calls it an exercise in “ancestral diplomacy.” It included ceremonies, exchanging gifts and listening to one another.

“Developing those kinds of connections with kin is unheard of, and it shouldn’t be,” Campbell says. “It felt really powerful.”

Balanta says ICE is the first organization she has come across that is approaching the green transition in this way. She hopes ICE can help Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government, which has stopped issuing new oil and gas contracts and is shifting the country to renewables with a lofty plan to create 20,000 “energy communities,” many on Indigenous territory.

While Petro’s government has changed the way the Colombian state considers the views of Indigenous Peoples, Balanta says important problems in the approach persist. “The communities are not seen as an actor that will lead its own processes, but as the recipient of charity,” says Balanta, who points to a government reparations program that has given families solar panels but, in the case of the Cofán community, no tools or instruction on how to make them work properly.

The transition should be about empowerment for Indigenous Peoples, Balanta says, noting they comprise 6.2% of the global population but safeguard 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. The learnings between Indigenous communities go both ways, Campbell and Kay stress.

“Even though for us clean energy is a bridge to asserting our sovereignty, to being leaders in this space, to building systems that work for us and are in a different way, in the [Global] South things look very different,” says Campbell, who observed a greater connection to the earth in the communities the ICE delegation visited, and less consumer-driven societies. As a result, some Indigenous people she and Kay spoke with don’t necessarily feel they need to participate in the energy transition.

“It wasn’t until we started talking about the realm of what’s possible, how you can benefit in multiple intersectional ways from energy projects, that it became of interest to [these communities],” Kay says.

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 The 67-year-old accountant is a trailblazer: after three and a half decades in financial management (including 11 years as chief executive officer at the First Nations Finance Authority), Daniels became the first First Nations person appointed to the Bank of Canada’s board of directors in January. His appointment comes at a critical time for the bank, which is currently reviewing its policies and processes to assess how it can contribute to economic reconciliation with Indigenous communities. 

The move is both a testament to Daniels’s business chops and a signal of the emergence of a generation of Indigenous finance leaders who are investing in major energy and infrastructure projects in their communities and on traditional territories.   

“I just focused on doing the job that I had in front of me to the best of my ability,” Daniels says in a telephone interview from his home in Kelowna, B.C. “I followed other people who blazed a trail.” 

Daniels is a member of the Salt River First Nation, a mix of Cree and Chipewyan people centred in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, where he fondly recalls joining the fall hunt with his father. Life took a turn when his parents sent him to a government-run residential school for high school in Yellowknife, where corporal punishment and suppression of Indigenous culture was the norm. He escaped the worst of residential school abuses, in part, he believes, because he entered as an older boy who was able to fend for himself. The federal government opened that school, Akaitcho Hall, in 1958 and in 1969 transferred it to the territorial government, which operated it until 1994. 

“Missing your family, not being around your family, was very difficult. But I learned to look after myself pretty quickly and became pretty disciplined,” Daniels recalls. “I was big enough that I could handle myself.” 

Upon graduating, he was offered a job with Environment Canada as a hydrometric survey technician monitoring water levels and flows in northern lakes and rivers. In school and in his work, he discovered he had an aptitude for math and pursued accounting, first at Aurora College in the Northwest Territories and then at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton. 

When he became a certified general accountant in 1991, he was one of a few First NationsIndigenous people in Canada to have done so. “It just wasn’t a profession that Aboriginal people got involved in,” he says. “But I have always been willing to take the opportunities that were put in front of me.” 

Daniels went on to work in private accounting firms and from there took on management positions at Indigenous organizations such as the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. 

Leading First Nations finance 

But it is at the First Nations Finance Authority (FNFA) that he has really made a mark on the financial opportunities available to First Nations.  

The FNFA was formed in 2012 as part of a Harper government effort to encourage better fiscal management on reserves.   

As CEO of FNFA, Daniels is focused on closing the gaping infrastructure gap – estimated at $350 billion – that exists between Indigenous communities and the rest of Canada. That includes everything from energy supply and clean water to healthcare infrastructure, access to digital networks and the banking system. Under the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, First Nations can qualify for FNFA access to capital by adopting a series of measures that demonstrate sound management, including third-party validation of financial practices and auditing of the nation’s books. 

Roughly half of the 630 First Nations in Canada are members – or “scheduled” under the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, which gives them access to FNFA’s borrowing ability. 

Daniels and the FNFA board have long urged Ottawa to open up new tools to financing, such as leveraging future government transfers for current borrowing. Such a measure would help communities access the significant capital they need to be able to carry out big infrastructure projects on their territories that are critical to their well-being, and it is long overdue.  

To emphasize the urgency, Daniels led a delegation of some 30 First Nations leaders to Ottawa last winter to lobby the Liberal government to include a mechanism in this year’s budget that would allow greater borrowing power for their communities. Although it had broad support, including from the House of Commons finance committee, the measure did not make it into Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s March 28 budget, much to their disappointment. 

I followed other people who blazed a trail. 

“I don’t see it as a hard ‘no,’” Daniels says. “We will continue with whatever means we have available to pursue this.” He notes that the Liberal government has vowed to close the infrastructure gap by 2030 but that federal revenues alone won’t accomplish that goal. Conservative Party MPs have endorsed the borrowing concept. 

Under Daniels’s guidance, FNFA has also participated in some of the largest Indigenous-led business deals in the country. That includes the acquisition by the Membertou First Nation and other East Coast Mi’kmaq communities of a 50% interest in Clearwater Seafood along with the fishing licences held by the corporation. Clearwater Seafood is one of the biggest shellfish operations in North America, and the inclusion of licences in the deal has led to expansion of First Nations’ fishing fleets.   

In addition, FNFA provided financing for Henvey Inlet Wind, a partnership between the Henvey Inlet First Nation and Pattern Energy. The project on the northeast shores of Georgian Bay has 300 megawatts of capacity plus transmission and is billed as the largest First Nation wind energy partnership in Canada. 

Daniels and the FNFA stepped in when the Henvey Inlet project was experiencing a $100-million cost overrun and secured a loan that kept financing costs at a reasonable level. 

Daniels “was a quick study,” says John Beaucage, vice-president of Nigig Power Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Henvey Inlet First Nation. “He understood what we needed and found a way to solve the problem that allowed benefits to continue to flow to the community.”   

Bank of Canada mandate 

As a Bank of Canada director, Daniels has a broad mandate to ensure that the central bank is managed in a manner that benefits all of Canadian society. Directors have no input into monetary policy. And indeed, the banks’ setting of interest rates and other policy tools use broad brushstrokes to reflect national conditions. 

However, senior bank officials have acknowledged that in both setting of monetary policy and provision of financial services, impacts on Indigenous communities must be considered. In a May 2022 speech to the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association, then-deputy governor Lawrence Schembri said that “economic reconciliation” is part of the bank’s responsibility. “Fostering Indigenous inclusion falls squarely within the bank’s mandate to promote the economic and financial well-being of our country and all the peoples within it,” said Schembri, who has since retired from the central bank. 

He noted that lack of access to credit and capital for Indigenous communities remains a barrier to their economic progress. That includes the lack of banking infrastructure, whether branches, automated teller machines or online services for the more remote communities. 

The Bank of Canada is developing a reconciliation action plan to address its areas of jurisdiction and to recommend other actions needed to bring financial capacity to Indigenous communities. A draft plan will be released for consultation “in due course,” bank spokesman Alex Paterson said in an email. 

However, like federal promises to close the infrastructure gap, addressing the financial-capacity gap will take pragmatic, long-term solutions and a change in the paternalistic attitudes that have long dogged Canada’s relations with First Nations. 

As for Daniels, he likes to focus on getting results rather than revisiting history. “Once you can understand what the issue is, it’s easier to find a solution,” he says. “If you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll say, ‘I can find a way.’” 

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Lewis’s kokum (grandmother) used to tell him that the water was once so pure their ancestors could simply fill their pots and make tea. Now, in the lagoon where he and his kokum would take walks, the water is so polluted “you’ll poison yourself if you take one sip,” he says. The Culture Camps are working to change that.

People start to take on a new responsibility to the land and “become stewards in their own way” once the camp is over, says Lewis, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan with an iyiniw pimatisiwin kiskeyihtamowin – a doctorate in Indigenous Ways of Knowing.

Lewis employs 10 people full-time in a community of 1,600 people. Depending on the season, he can employ another 10 or more. Initiatives like kâniyâsihk preserve Indigenous culture, traditions and languages while boosting local Indigenous economies. Indigenous-owned businesses and projects also tend to protect the lands and waters that they operate on.

Growing the Indigenous-led conservation economy is one of the goals that Canada’s political leaders emphasized at the UN COP15 biodiversity summit in Montreal in December. Canada, along with more than 190 countries, committed to protecting 30% of its lands and waters by 2030 (known as the 30×30 target).

“Canada’s biodiversity goals can only be met with the partnership of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people across the country,” said Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault in a statement.

On the opening day of COP15, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that $800 million will be invested over seven years to support four Indigenous-led conservation initiatives. After the projects are completed, up to one million square kilometres of land and water will be protected in northern B.C., Nunavut, Ontario and the Northwest Territories. The funding is meant to be a step forward with Indigenous Nations to “deliver a vision of conservation that has partnership and reconciliation at its core,” Trudeau said.

Indigenous communities are already leading the way. Globally, 80% of biodiversity is stewarded by Indigenous Peoples, according to the UN. In Canada, 90% of protection areas established in the last two decades have been the result of Indigenous leadership, according to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI).

First Nation, Inuit and Métis leaders in Canada are creating Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas as large as Costa Rica monitored by Indigenous Guardians, while smaller-scale projects and businesses (ranging from eco-lodges to sustainable fisheries and small-scale forestry) generate good-paying jobs that help unleash investment in regional economies, as the ILI notes.

It’s all part of the Indigenous-led conservation and stewardship economy that’s gaining momentum.

With these investments, Canada is offering a model for supporting Indigenous-led stewardship.

 

—Valérie Courtois, Indigenous Leadership Initiative

One of those people paving the way is Robert Brown, a Haida Fisheries Guardian. He says that Guardians go through weeks of training so they are able to collect data, patrol, and monitor waterways while actively working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Guardians also monitor their own people to ensure that they are not overfishing or overharvesting.

“We need to keep our stock going for future generations, so that my granddaughter could one day go out and fish and harvest where I was,” Brown says. This is Brown’s eighth season being a Guardian, and during this time he has seen drastic changes in the environment that he patrols. “Our beaches have changed dramatically with the bigger tides, and then our fish stocks have dropped, as well as our clam beds,” he says.

Since 2018, there have been 170 Indigenous Guardian programs working to conserve and manage their lands across Canada. With the recent launch of the First Nations National Guardians Network (and $5.8 million in new funding from the feds), those conservation jobs are rapidly multiplying.

“This is the first [network] of its kind in the world,” said ILI director Valérie Courtois in a statement. “With these investments, Canada is offering a model for respecting and supporting the Indigenous-led stewardship – a model we hope spreads around the world.”

Indigenous ecotourism

Kylik Kisoun Taylor is Inuit from the Northwest Territories. He runs a tourism company on the outskirts of Yellowknife. Taylor thinks it is important for settlers and Indigenous Peoples alike to experience Indigenous ecotourism adventures, such as the ones he offers in which participants make their own igloos. “The people that book our trips are investing with my people as opposed to just examining them,” he says.

“We offer a way to immerse people into the cultural way of life in the Arctic.”

Ecotourism businesses are another pathway to upholding Indigenous cultures, traditions, spirituality and values while also boosting the local Indigenous economy and land conservation, says Keith Henry, president and CEO of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC).

“There are a number of businesses that are doing that now today that couldn’t [before]. It wasn’t very marketable, or as competitive, or as sustainable 10 to 15 years ago.”

Henry says the most profitable businesses that Indigenous communities own are multifaceted. They offer cultural centres, culinary experiences, storytelling, powwow performances, ceremonies, Elder teachings and on-the-land experiences.

And the industry is in high demand. ITAC represents around 1,900 Indigenous-owned businesses across Canada. Henry says that these businesses generated roughly $1.9 billion in revenue and employed 39,000 people in 2019 – ITAC’s best year yet. That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Tourism was the first hit, and it’s the last to recover,” Henry explains. Indigenous enterprises lost between 75% and 80% of their staff across the country, and they still have not returned to 2019 levels. But Henry is hopeful. “By 2030, we expect to [represent] at least 4.4 or more billion dollars in direct GDP.” He says there is a renewed interest in authentic Indigenous eco-tourism experiences and teachings after the recent findings of unmarked residential school gravesites. “That has really awoken, especially domestically in Canada, a renewed interest in the large majority of Canadians that realize that we have to correct past history.”

“One of the ways they can do that is to just try to be better partners going forward.”

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“It was 2015, and I had this crazy dream about lip gloss and little native girls. I woke up in the middle of the night and started writing out all these ideas that came flooding from the dream.”

Her first thought was to create liquid lipstick to fund a scholarship in her grandmother’s name. Harper’s Anishinaabe grandmother was a residential school survivor and suffered great trauma as a result of the experience. Harper had a long-held desire to do something meaningful, something that would make an impact in her Indigenous community. But it wasn’t enough to create another line of lipsticks; she wanted to disrupt the $40-billion cosmetic industry. Harper wanted young Indigenous women to see themselves reflected in the products they used, to feel pride and “empowered to do great things.”

With social purpose and sustainability baked into the business model, Harper began seeking out investors to help her grow her fledgling business. After her third audition for Dragon’s Den, she was invited to pitch to the show’s panellists, thrusting her brand into the spotlight. When a “Dragon” offered her $125,000 for a 50% stake in her company, without hesitation she said, “No, thank you.”

It turned out Cheekbone Beauty had just been offered a $350,000 investment from Vancouver’s Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, a deal in which she maintained 100% ownership of the company, as well as $50,000 from Desjardins to create scholarships for First Nations children.

“We have a shared vision toward building economic reconciliation in Canada,” Raven managing partner Jeff Cyr said in a statement announcing the deal. “It’s inspiring Indigenous entrepreneurs like Jenn Harper, driving systemic change, and building dynamic and resilient Indigenous communities.”

Cheekbone Beauty is now in R&D mode, sharply focused on incorporating Indigenous knowledge and sustainability values into every aspect of its business. The company has set out to eliminate all single-use plastics and shift all raw ingredients to plant- or bio-based sources by 2023. The cruelty-free cosmetics company also donates 10% of proceeds to First Nations non-profits, including First Nations Child & Family Caring Society.

Cheekbone Beauty launched its new sub-line of Sustain lipsticks, packaged with 85% less plastic in recyclable paper tubes, in March 2020, right before the pandemic took the wind out of global lipstick sales. But while COVID affected the supply chain and operations, Cheekbone Beauty recovered quickly. The company saw a 350% increase in revenue in 2020 as media interest from Vogue, Elle and other major beauty magazines poured in. “Brands that focus on BIPOC communities really felt a big push in attention,” CEO Harper says from her office in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Representation matters. It’s important for Indigenous people to see themselves in the world around them, creating a sense of belonging. “Our North Star, our reason for getting up in the morning, is how our business is impacting and resonating with Indigenous youth,” Harper says.

“We want youth to see themselves in our products and know that they are beautiful and worthy.”

Shilpa Tiwari is the founder of Her Climb, a social enterprise with the mission to increase the number of racialized women in senior positions in corporations.

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Fuelled by a desire to address systemic inequity and armed with a master’s in political studies, Cyr took on lead roles in government agencies that gave him the opportunity to work from the inside to create space for Indigenous people at the proverbial table. But the roles also exposed him to the almost insurmountable barriers that Indigenous people face in every aspect of Canadian society.

Cyr didn’t grow up immersed in Canada’s troubled relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Born on the east coast of Vancouver Island, he spent his early childhood on a Canadian military base in Germany. His family returned to Canada when he was 10 and planted roots in the traditional Métis area of White Horse Plains, in southern Manitoba. Closer to his people, he began experiencing what it meant to be an Indigenous person in Canada: poorer health, lower levels of employment, high suicide rates, inadequate housing.

A high school exchange trip to India brought him face to face with another example of how a colonial past shows up in present-day policies, socioeconomics, and identity and cemented his determination to work toward removing systemic barriers. By the time he was taking leading negotiator positions in government, he was a firsthand witness to how the government’s attempts at inclusion were failing to break down “the very systems they put in place to excise Indigenous people,” a failure that prevented Indigenous people from becoming “full economic citizens.”

After more than a decade in government, Cyr felt compelled to find a different route to economic reconciliation. As the executive director of the National Association of Friendship Centres, he met Indigenous entrepreneurs working to build economic systems based on Indigenous knowledge and practices, guided by the wisdom of Elders and ancestors. Indigenous communities were innovating long before we started to hear corporations and governments speak to its value, Cyr points out. “We survived colonization, disease and economic exclusion because of our ability to innovate.”

“We survived colonization, disease and economic exclusion because of our ability to innovate.”

– Jeff Cyr, co-founder of Raven Indigenous Capital

 

But he noticed that Indigenous entrepreneurs remained unconnected to mainstream social innovation hubs, which offer access to capital, knowledge and networks. To increase the profile of Indigenous innovation within the larger social-innovation community, Cyr reached out to a number of organizations, including the McConnell Foundation, to hold the first Indigenous Innovation Summit. In 2018, he and two partners (including Paul Lacerte of B.C.’s Nadleh Whut’en First Nation) co-founded Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, Canada’s first Indigenous venture-capital intermediary.

Cyr explains that to transform historical power dynamics from dependency to self-determination, Raven leans in to a model that allows communities to set their own development priorities and then collectively brainstorm solutions rooted in Indigenous values and knowledge. A solutions-lab approach is used to determine needs and desired outcomes and connect with impact investors, foundations and governments.

Animikii, an Indigenous digital agency that was turned down for financing by big banks, was the first company to receive an investment through the Raven Indigenous Impact Fund in 2019. Animikii has sustained year-over-year growth, and the team has doubled in size. Other companies in Raven’s portfolio: Cheekbone Beauty, OneFeather (a digital voting and banking app), Virtual Gurus (a virtual assistant service) and Plato (a software-testing service).

“Decolonizing the investment process will open up niche market growth,” says Cyr.

Fundraising for the impact fund far surpassed the initial goal of $5 million, raising more than $25 million.

Cyr is proud of what Raven has accomplished to date, though he’s quick to point out that this moment is a result of many years of working with his Indigenous community and family. “Ultimately, we want a human-centred economy, one that centres on a balance between people and the planet.”

Shilpa Tiwari is the founder of Her Climb, a social enterprise with the mission to increase the number of racialized women in senior positions in corporations.

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Last fall, Mi’kmaq harvesters were met with violence as the Sipekne’katik First Nation launched its “moderate livelihood” fishery in St. Marys Bay, 250 kilometres west of Halifax. Lobster pounds were set ablaze, a Mi’kmaq boat was fired upon with flares, and traps tagged as “moderate livelihood” were seized by commercial fishers determined to centre the narrative that the Mi’kmaq were fishing out of season – all while Maine’s lobster-fishing season is open year-round. Out of the tension-filled season, a historic deal was announced: several Mi’kmaq communities would become co-owners of Clearwater, an international powerhouse in the seafood market. The move quickly established the Mi’kmaq as an economic broker in the region.

“This is a transformational moment,” says Chief Terry Paul of Membertou First Nation, who led the $1-billion deal. “It makes me really proud of us Mi’kmaq.”

The coalition he helped forge with seven First Nations invested $250 million in the groundbreaking takeover, with financing from the non-profit First Nations Finance Authority, which is governed by its borrowing members. They now have a 50% ownership stake in North America’s largest shellfish provider, with B.C.-based Premium Brands purchasing the other half.

In Paul’s home community of Unama’ki (Cape Breton Island), they’re rolling out training for people to get involved in offshore fishing and have hired an Indigenous employment officer for Clearwater, which currently employs 200 people in the region, 6% of whom are Indigenous.

One of the key differences between the Clearwater deal and the Mi’kmaq moderate-livelihood fishery is that Clearwater held commercial offshore licences, allowing them to fish lobster year-round, while moderate livelihood contends with treaty rights and typically means inshore lobster fishing (within 50 nautical miles from shore). Offshore fishing requires larger boats, more intense training and safety protocols.

Last summer, Membertou First Nation purchased two of the offshore licences, and Paul promised then that they would continue to gain access to more seafood markets. Buying out Clearwater, which sold more than $600 million in scallops, clams, rock crab, shrimp and lobster on the global market in 2019, has made the coalition the largest holder of shellfish licences and quotas in Canada.

Seafood sales have taken a major hit during the pandemic because of restaurant closures, but Paul believes the deal will have a lasting impact for the Mi’kmaq and other First Nations.

Of the seven First Nations that teamed up to buy out Clearwater, six are from Nova Scotia (Membertou, Sipekne’katik, We’koqma’q, Potlotek, Pictou Landing and Paqtnkek); the seventh, Miawpukek First Nation, is from Newfoundland. Paul says that he would like to see more Indigenous people join the company.

Sophia Sidarous, a Mi’kmaw water protector and director of Earth Guardians Ottawa/Gatineau, agrees the moment is big for Atlantic Indigenous communities. Indigenous people have often been excluded from the Canadian economy, and she’s glad to see some taking part, but Sidarous wants more assurance Clearwater’s fishing will be done in an ecologically sound manner.

“I’m 100% for economic participation, but it needs to be done sustainably,” says Sidarous, who is originally from Metepenagiag Mi’kmaq Nation, 150 kilometres north of Moncton. None of the nine Mi’kmaq communities in New Brunswick participated in the Clearwater deal.

In 2019, Clearwater was convicted by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for improperly storing 3,800 lobster traps along the ocean floor in 2017. In December 2020, Clearwater confirmed that it was dropping its Marine Stewardship Council certification for the Canadian offshore lobster fishing part of its business. The popular certification applies to fisheries that meet sustainability standards.

Chief Paul says the decision not to seek recertification for its offshore lobster fishery “was a business decision based on that fishery representing a small proportion of Clearwater’s overall lobster supply . . . balanced against the costs required to recertify.” He adds that Clearwater’s lobster fishery “remains sustainable, with all the sustainability measures that were in place for 10 years of successful certification remaining in effect.” The MSC seal remains on most other Clearwater products.

Environmental advocates like Sidarous will be watching closely to make sure they deliver on that commitment. She says every industry should be asking how they can operate sustainably while ocean temperatures and sea levels continue to rise and global fish stocks decline: “Economic prosperity needs to be balanced with sustainability.”

Paul agrees. With First Nations steering the ship, he says, the global seafood market will soon be introduced to Netukulimk, the Mi’kmaq belief that any harvesting of the natural bounty must be done respectfully and in harmony with nature.

“Whatever we fish we will fish sustainably. We want to ensure the next seven generations have access, and science conservation is first and foremost in our minds,” says Paul.

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Then, of course, COVID happened. The day we announced to our staff that I would be the new CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) was also the last day we all worked in the office together. On March 16, 2020 we began working remotely to help stop the spread of a new virus that had begun to sweep across the globe. Since then, I have seen businesses and communities pull together in formidable ways, but there’s no denying that the pandemic has been particularly hard on Indigenous businesses.

In May, we launched a survey in partnership with the Indigenous Business COVID-19 Response Taskforce to understand the impact of the pandemic on Indigenous businesses. The results were deeply worrying. Just under half (44%) of Indigenous businesses indicated that, without support, they were likely to fail after three to six months, while 10% of businesses predicted operations could not last more than a month without support; 2% said their businesses had already closed.

There were also some stark differences between demographic groups:

• 61% of women-owned Indigenous businesses reported a “very negative” impact compared to 53% of men-owned businesses.

• 38% of Inuit-owned businesses experienced a revenue drop of 50% or more, compared to 27% of Métis and 31% of First Nations–owned businesses.

While the federal government was quick to announce support for Canadian businesses last spring, Indigenous businesses were initially ineligible for some programs because of their unique business or tax structures. There was also no initial support for the more than half of Indigenous businesses that don’t use traditional financial institutions to access financing, in particular those owners who live on-reserve and lack the collateral typically used to get a loan. The pandemic has only highlighted that Indigenous businesses face distinct barriers. Limited access to financing, unreliable internet access, lack of adequate infrastructure, and limited personal net worth are some of the key issues that have been exacerbated over the past year. Economic reconciliation means addressing these barriers.

Understanding the unique ways that Indigenous business, and as a result the Indigenous economy, operates – much of which has been out of necessity – is a key element to ensuring equitable access to resources. And if Indigenous-owned businesses are to thrive, they’ll need more than just better access to loans, financing and COVID-response programs. In 2019, the Government of Canada committed to having “at least 5% of federal contracts awarded to businesses managed and led by Indigenous Peoples.” Though that figure has been as low as 0.32% some years, CCAB research demonstrates that Indigenous businesses in Canada could meet up to 24% of the federal government’s current spend.

Despite the barriers that Indigenous people have faced since contact, they have persisted. That determination was demonstrated last spring, when many Indigenous businesses pivoted their operations to supply personal protective equipment to help meet increased demand. Our survey identified 84 businesses providing PPE and 57 that could quickly retool to do so. However, there was little evidence of the federal government meeting its 5% target on PPE contracts.

Through our Aboriginal Procurement Marketplace, we already connect 72 Procurement Champions – Canadian companies that have committed to Indigenous procurement – with hundreds of businesses certified to be 51% or more owned and controlled by Indigenous people, through the Certified Aboriginal Business program. By increasing Indigenous procurement, corporate Canada can be part of moving the dial on economic reconciliation – a mutually beneficial opportunity that supports the Indigenous economy without affecting a corporation’s bottom line.

Initial results of a second survey to see how Indigenous businesses are faring nearly a year into the pandemic demonstrate that although things are more optimistic for business owners, they still report negative impacts, particularly on revenues and staff. They continue to face challenges accessing government support. Despite the odds, Indigenous businesses like media company Kejic Productions, cosmetic start-up Cheekbone Beauty and skincare company Satya Organic have seen impressive growth this past year. As economies recover from the pandemic, we want to build on that growth.

As our 2020 COVID survey showed, recovery will be a particularly volatile time for Indigenous businesses as they navigate additional barriers, but Indigenous businesses have demonstrated capacity, determination and innovative thinking in the face of the pandemic. It’s more important than ever that as we reopen and rebuild, we ensure that we build an inclusive, more equitable economy that benefits us all.

Tabatha Bull is president & CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

This article is part of our Indigenous Economy Rising cover series from Corporate Knights Spring Issue, out April 21, 2021.

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I see the parallels between the safeguarding of the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture in the face of past, present and future environmental degradation. Attempting to awaken the world to this common understanding has guided my work. I have spent the last 15 years speaking to many audiences, offering a human story from the unique vantage point from which I come, my Inuit culture serving as the very anchor of my spirit. Travelling from city to city, province to province, across our large country of Canada, I was busier than I have ever been, as Canadians finally started to understand the Arctic connection – until COVID-19 hit. Now, many months later, I have learned to carry on with these “teaching” moments via Zoom and recorded messages.

When you share the human side of climate change, people relate to it better. The issues become clearer for them, no matter where they come from, when they can see themselves in human stories. In other words, if we can shift climate change out of the language of science, politics and economics and bring it home to the issues of health, food security, culture, families, communities and human rights – not just for Inuit, but for us all – it is more relatable. It helps to mobilize people to take action to address climate change in a tangible way.

After my book The Right to Be Cold came out, I was invited to New Zealand and Australia for book festivals. I was on a panel with Tim Flannery, a well-known Australian climatologist and author. At the end of the panel discussion, an audience member asked Tim a question: “What is lacking in our world, when we now know the science so clearly, that is not allowing us to take urgent action on climate change?” Tim’s answer struck a chord with me: “Imagination.”

Imagine we can do things differently. Imagine we can address climate change differently. Imagine we can innovate sustainable economies differently.

I believe we need to not only imagine a new way of doing things, but we must, as Canadians, re-imagine our unsustainable economic values and realign them with Indigenous values. Inuit and other Indigenous Peoples are not just victims of globalization wreaking havoc on our communities. With our understanding of nature, which we depend on as our food source and as a powerful character-builder for our children, Indigenous Peoples have much to offer in helping to galvanize a largely disconnected urban world. The pandemic has shown us just how interconnected we all are. The knowledge, values and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples hold the answers to the many challenges our world faces today. I strongly believe Indigenous wisdom is the medicine we seek in healing our planet and creating a sustainable world.

Transformation must happen from a very personal place; our attitudes, outdated policies based on colonialism, and unsustainable businesses must be shed and changed to meet a new world order, one that embraces the real meaning of our common humanity.

As author and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson says, “Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.”

Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet.

This article is part of a series of stories from our Winter Issue cover package: What it will take for us to get the climate message before it’s too late.

On Wednesday, December 9, Watt-Cloutier joined Corporate Knights, with Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki for a fireside chat about climate action.

Watch the full event below.

For more information on the event, visit corporateknights.com/paristoglasgow.

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It’s time for a new story, one where Indigenous people assume their rightful place at the economic table of this country.

Why Indigenomics? The truths of this country lie in the experience of Indigenous communities in poverty without access to clean water, warm housing, clean power or good jobs. The root of this can be traced to centuries of being excluded economically.

Dara Kelly notes in her paper Indigenous Development, Wealth, Freedom and Capabilities: “Situating Indigenous economic freedom within a framework of humanism affirms not only the rights of Indigenous peoples to define our own economic futures, but in exchange for economic autonomy, contracts a mutual responsibility to care for, and not violate the rights of others to economic freedom.” This is the next-level Canada. This is Indigenomics.

Through the formation of Canada, Indigenous peoples have gone through four economic stages:

1. Disruption: The first is characterized by the systemic disruption of existing Indigenous economic systems, ways of being and removal from the land while severing inherent authority and responsibility to place.

2. Entanglement: This second stage is characterized by the complexity of the entanglement of the Indigenous relationship firmly embedded within conflict stemming from the disruption.

3. Emergence: The third is characterized by the emergence of the Indigenous legal environment. With over 250 cases won to date, these cases have shaped the economic space for the growth of Indigenous business.

4. Empowerment: Today, Canada is in the fourth stage, characterized by the rise of Indigenous economic empowerment. As an effect of the shifting Indigenous Aboriginal rights and title legal environment, economic equality and inclusion now shape the rise of Indigenous economic empowerment today.

A fundamental question that shaped this country was, how do we eliminate the Indian problem? It is a question that has penetrated the consciousness of generations of Canadians allowing the perception of Indigenous peoples as a problem or a burden. This question begs for relevance as the Canadian courts continuously validate Indigenous rights through the acknowledgement of our place in modernity and the requirement for economic inclusion today.

Questions are the architecture for tomorrow; the quality of questions we ask drives the results. The question of today is, how do we collectively facilitate the development of Canada’s $100 billion Indigenous economy? In the words of Canada’s greatest hockey player, Wayne Gretzky: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” This is how the Indigenomics Institute is working to develop the emerging Indigenous economy.

This new story of Indigenous peoples can be seen through the joint work of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business and TD Economics, which estimated the annual contribution of the Indigenous economy at over $30 billion in 2016. This figure acts as an initial metric of the growing strength of the Indigenous economy.

The benchmark numbers that frame the growth of the Indigenous economy can be drawn from recent reports:

• An Atlantic region report identified the size of the Indigenous economic impact in that region as $1.2 billion annually.

• A recent Manitoba report puts the Indigenous economic impact in the province at over $9 billion annually.

• An Indigenous Works report based on a research study found that up to 85% of Canadian businesses currently do not engage with Indigenous peoples in any way.

• A National Indigenous Economic Development Board report highlights the potential of an annual $27.7 billion boost to the Canadian economy through better mobilization of the Indigenous workforce.

Framing the future of Canada and the Indigenous relationship can be understood within the concept that we as a country have reached the intersection where the risk of doing nothing outweighs the cost of doing nothing.

Setting the stage for a next-level Canada today means actualizing this growing story of Indigenous economic potential. It must be based on a new understanding that the growth of the Indigenous economy cannot be advanced within existing Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada program and funding approaches. Modern Indigenous economic design is required today, with a strong Indigenous equity ownership, governance, environmental planning and procurement at the heart of any approach.

While Canada was founded on the economic legacy of systemic economic segregation of Indigenous peoples, the pathway forward must be inclusive and purposeful. Indigenous resilience is now expressing out from the margins to the centre of this country’s economic lifeblood.

Indigenomics is a platform for economic reconciliation. Indigenous peoples have existed on the margins of the balance sheet, viewed as a liability. Reconciliation must now occur in the balance sheet of this country. To achieve a $100 billion Indigenous economy requires a shift in how we relate to Indigenous peoples – to see Indigenous peoples as economic powerhouses in our own right.

The $100 billion Indigenous economy is a modern stake in the ground, the marker of a new economic reality on which Canada’s larger economic future now depends.

Carol Anne Hilton is the CEO and founder of the Indigenomics Institute

Also by Carol Anne Hilton: ‘Investing in reconciliation: the role for institutional investors.’

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