Blog #12: Indigenous Engagement: Part 4: Principles and Practices
I my previous Indigenous Engagement blogs #9, #10, and #11, I shared insights I learned from my far north First Nations mentors that answer the questions what, why, when, who, where and how, and delve into the work of engagement preparation. In this blog, I speak to engagement principles and practices.
Meaningful engagement is best founded on principles defined jointly with the First Nations you are engaging with, including:
Respect and humility: Recognize the unique and valuable Indigenous world views, knowledge, cultures, traditions and practices.
Early and ongoing engagement: Engage Indigenous communities as soon as possible, ideally during the conceptual stage of an initiative. Engagement at this stage can be challenging because the project scope is ill-defined, planning is incomplete, and approvals are not in place. But, that is the ideal time because Indigenous people have meaningful input that will help shape the initiative. When I experienced conflict, delayed engagement was often a contributing factor.
Transparency: Be truthful about the purpose and scope of your initiative. Identify what is on and off the table for you and understand what is acceptable or not for the Indigenous people. Develop communication channels to exchange clear and timely information. Sometimes your initiative may not be compatible with the Indigenous worldview. Is it not better to mutually discover that incompatibility sooner than later? And yes, there were project concepts that I walked away from before implementation because of such incompatibility.
Cultural sensitivity and awareness: Recognize that Indigenous cultures, traditions, and values differ between communities, perhaps only slightly, but often significantly. Achieving a mutual understanding with one Indigenous community does not give you a blanket understanding to apply to other Indigenous communities.
Photo 1: Indigenous engagement requires cultural awareness and sensitivity. This First Nations person, Joey Ostamus, was dancing in his traditional pow wow regalia during a christian spiritual event in the remote First Nations community of Fort Hope, homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, July 22, 2005
Meaningful participation: Provide options for Indigenous communities to participate in the initiative, starting at the decision-making stage and including project activities. The inclusion encourages shared ownership of an initiative, which is important.
Photo 2a: As part of a collaborative project, Lori Churchill (left; formerly Ontario Geological Survey), Martha Papah (centre; Eabametoong First Nation) and Lily Slipperjack (right; Eabametoong First Nation) worked together to create new Ojibwe language using English technical words and phrases that describe geological and related activities. The new Ojibwe language creation project produced a glossary. The project was meaningful to Eabametoong First Nation because the project followed community practices, the new Ojibwe language was in their dialect and in their cultural context, and school children from from the John C Yesno Education Centre (Fort Hope) researched and created many of the images to illustrate the geological activity. Image: composed by Andy Fyon, in Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, April 1, 2004. See following photo.
Photo 2b: As part of a collaborative language project, teachers and school children of the John C Yesno Education Centre, Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, created art and drawings that illustrated various geological and related activities. The drawings supported new Ojibwe language exlanations for those activities. Image: composed by Andy Fyon, in Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, May 12, 2004.
Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC): Some mentors stated this principle in different ways. They spoke of “consent”. FPIC requires that agreement with Indigenous peoples be reached before a project can take place on their homeland. FPIC is a key part of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). FPIC was a challenge for me as the leader of an Ontario government organization because I had no authority to set a legal and government-wide precedent by accepting it. Given that the First Nations right to consent has no legal status in Ontario, I had no authority, as an Ontario government employee, to recognize or accept the First Nations right to consent. Yet, OGS was able to embrace the spirit of FPIC at the project implementation stage, where decisions affected HOW, WHERE, and WHEN a project was delivered, but not IF a project was delivered. With some communities, we could not agree on the scope of FPIC, specifically on the right to consent, and we all agreed to defer or suspend project-related discussions and not implement a project. Understanding the limits of your authority is an important principle.
Facial continuity: Try to keep the same people on your engagement team (see Story A4, Relationships Develop between People, Not Organizations). They know the project history. They have developed their own relationships. They have developed mutual respect and trust with their Indigenous colleagues. Their relationships can encourage candid and unguarded discussions that can anticipate, and even remove, obstacles. That said, I acknowledge that this can be a difficult principle to maintain over many years.
Photo 3a: AsOne of the many benefits of maintaining a long-term connection with an Indigenous community, you develop relationships with families that last many years. Genesis Sugarhead (left) and Wanda Sugardhead, mother of Genesis, in the remote First Nations community of Fort Hope, in the homeland of Eabametoong First Nation, Ontario, Canada, December 18, 2012. See following image for an update photo. Photo by Andy Fyon.
Photo 3b: Genesis Sugarhead (left) and the painting she created to honour the passing of her grandgather, with her Mother Wanda Sugarhead and Father Robert Sugarhead, all of Eabametoong First Nation, in their home in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, May 22, 2023. Some relationships started through community engagement stand the test of time. Photo by Andy Fyon.
Gender balance: We quickly learned the benefit of a gender-balanced team (see Story A4, Relationships Develop Between People, Not Organizations). As a male, my relationship with many female First Nations members was different from the relationships my female team members had with female First Nations. A gender-balanced team opens new doors and deepens community engagement.
Develop collaboration principles: One engagement goal is collaboration. I found it helpful to discuss collaboration principles to help avoid misunderstandings. Collaboration principles should be jointly developed. The ones we found useful were shared conceptualization, shared planning, shared resourcing, shared decision-making (where possible and practical), shared approvals, shared risks, and shared rewards. Principles should reflect your scope of authority. If you have no authority to share decision-making, then explain that to the Indigenous community.
This is not an exhaustive list of principles. Nor should it be. After all, you will jointly develop collaboration principles with the Indigenous communities you engage with. I came away with three valuable lessons:
Jointly developed engagement principles are a foundation for building respectful relationships;
Jointly developed collaboration principles and processes are not a guarantee that you will achieve success, regardless of how success is defined; and
I learned to choose my words carefully and take time to explain my intent to avoid misunderstandings that might lead to conflict.
Ver: April 2/25
