BEYOND DIVERSITY
Indigenous
Inclusiveness
IMPLEMENTING TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN THE WORKPLACE
By Sarah B. Hood
In September 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surprised
some observers when he used his address to the UN General
Assembly not to show off Canada’s accomplishments, but
to speak about the country’s failures in its relations with its
Indigenous peoples. He said that, for most of its history, Canada
“rejected the very notion that whole generations of Indigenous
peoples have the right to define for themselves what a decent life
might be. And we robbed Canada of the contributions these gen-erations
would have made to growing our great country.”
The report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC), released in December 2015, laid out a blueprint for ad-dressing
some of the mistakes of the past through its “Calls to
Action” to various sectors of society, including the corporate com-munity.
Yet a report released in October 2017 by Indigenous
Works (formerly the Aboriginal Human Resource Council), based
on surveys of 500 businesses, shows that 85 per cent of Canadian
businesses are “not engaged with Indigenous communities.”
Most companies “do not have Indigenous engagement strategies,
partnerships or workplace inclusion strategies,” said Indigenous
Works president and CEO, Kelly Lendsay, and most of the “com-mitted
and engaged” six per cent that do “are primarily from the
resource sector.”
DEFINING RECONCILIATION
Item number 92 among the TRC Calls to Action urges the corpo-rate
sector “to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework”; to commit
to “meaningful consultation…before proceeding with economic
development projects”; to ensure “that Aboriginal peoples have eq-uitable
access to jobs, training and education opportunities in the
corporate sector, and that Aboriginal communities gain long-term
sustainable benefits from economic development projects,” and to
train “management and staff on the history of Aboriginal peoples”
as well as on “intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human
rights and anti-racism.”
16 ❚ JANUARY 2018 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL