“We describe it as economic reconciliation,” said Paul-Emile
McNab, director of business development and strategic initiatives
for the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB), which
forges connections between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal busi-nesses.
“To me, what it means is corporate Canada and Aboriginal
businesses working together with all parties to better the lives of
all peoples across the country.”
CCAB president and CEO J.P. Gladu, who is from the Bingwi
Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in Northern Ontario, says
economic reconciliation “will be achieved when our communities
are no longer managing poverty, but managing wealth.”
“I always tell people that reconciliation is a journey,” said Gene
Jamieson, managing director and principal consultant with Turtle
Clan Management Consulting Inc., who presented at the 2017
Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) Annual
Conference, and who will speak there again in 2018. “It’s not about
us achieving a destination, but how we’re going along this jour-ney
to find the truth and to create a new relationship between
Indigenous people and Canadians. It is the act of understanding
the truth and doing something to fix it.”
In this case, the truth, he says, includes knowing about such
historical chapters as the residential schools, where Indigenous
children who had been separated from their families and cultur-al
ties were often abused; the “Sixties Scoop,” which saw many
Indigenous children taken unwillingly from their homes for fos-tering
or adoption; and the RCMP’s cull of valuable sled dogs
in Inuit communities between the 1950s and 1970s, which, says
Jamieson, “demolished or desecrated the lifestyle.”
The goal of this drive for truth, says Deborah Green, owner of
Corporate Cree Consulting (a Calgary-based provider of custom-ized
diversity solutions) is “making sure that history never repeats
itself, and that everybody is working together to eliminate those
systemic problems.”
OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIVIDUALS
AND BUSINESS
Michelle Sault, an Anishinaabe Qwe from the Mississaugas of the
New Credit First Nation in Ontario, is the principal consultant for
Minokaw Consulting, which provides support with facilitation,
strategic development and organizational capacity building. She
says that “the first step in reconciliation is recognizing that a rec-onciliatory
approach is a necessary ingredient to moving forward,”
and observes that true reconciliation is “not about non-Indigenous
people fixing things for Indigenous people,” but an opportunity
for all Canadians to “stop and examine where they are in the rela-tionship
and determine then where they wish to go.”
This includes opportunity for businesses, in terms of a strong
and under-tapped labour pool and an increasingly important
consumer market. Statistics Canada finds that the Aboriginal
population – in cities as well as rural and remote areas – is the
fastest-growing segment of the Canadian population. In the 2016
Census, more than half of the 1,673,785 people who identified
themselves as Aboriginal were living in urban centres, with the
largest populations in Winnipeg (92,810), Edmonton (76,205),
Vancouver (61,460) and Toronto (46,315).
The urban Aboriginal population is young and mobile.
“These are our future workforce, our emerging leaders, business
owners, future clients. It’s something that businesses need to think
about,” said Jamieson.
Buying power is also on the rise. A June 2011 Special Report by
TD Economics titled Estimating the Size of the Aboriginal Market
in Canada showed that “the combined total income of Aboriginal
households, business and government sectors” had grown from
$12 billion in 2001 to an estimated $24 billion in 2011. When
TD revisited these figures in 2015 (The Long and Winding Road
Towards Aboriginal Economic Prosperity), they found the market
had grown to between $27 and $31 billion in 2016.
TECHNIQUES FOR INCLUSION
There are plenty of resources for organizations that are ready
to begin moving towards Indigenous inclusiveness. For instance,
the CCAB offers its Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR)
program, a certification for businesses meeting various levels of
best practices in Aboriginal relations. Indigenous Works has de-veloped
two organizational development systems: a seven-stage
partnership model and the seven-stage Inclusion Continuum,
which builds and benchmarks inclusive workplace strategies
and practices.
“We’ve built up a good database of the strategies that have
worked and not worked to improve workplace performance and
inclusion leadership,” said Lendsay. “Companies need to build their
knowledge of Indigenous communities and grow their cultural
competencies. This may require the need for cultural awareness
training for company leaders, managers and employees so that they
become more familiar with First Nations, Métis and Inuit out-looks
and perspectives, and what this means for your workplace.”
feature
“THESE ARE OUR FUTURE WORKFORCE,
OUR EMERGING LEADERS, BUSINESS
OWNERS, FUTURE CLIENTS. IT’S
SOMETHING THAT BUSINESSES
NEED TO THINK ABOUT.”
– GENE JAMIESON
By stscheb / Shutterstock.com Continued on page 20
18 ❚ JANUARY 2018 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL