How modern mining must start with trust, with Mokwateh

Welcome to the latest episode in our mining arc! In the previous two episodes, we covered the geopolitics of critical minerals and whether deep sea mining is the innovation we need to meet growing demand for critical clean tech raw materials.

This week, we turn to one of the most important lessons emerging from the mining sector: modern projects succeed when trust is built before the digging begins. How mines affect and benefit people, especially those isolated communities that live on resource-rich land, is becoming an essential part of mining operations. 

Around half of the world’s untapped energy transition minerals are located on or near land inhabited by Indigenous and peasant communities, according to a 2022 study by the University of the Free State and the University of Queensland. 

As demand for these resources grows, developers are learning that access to minerals alone is not enough. Communities expect to be part of the process, and in many jurisdictions they now have the power to delay or stop projects altogether. That means success depends not just on access to land, capital or permits, but on whether communities believe they have been properly heard, respected and included.

In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews JP Gladu, founder and principal at Indigenous-led consulting firm Mokwateh, about what it really means to gain the social licence to operate. 

JP explains his “involve and support” mantra: involve communities from the earliest stages of project design, not after decisions have already been made, and support them with the resources they need to participate properly. 

That might mean providing clear information about the project, funding access to advisers and technical experts, or creating intermediaries who can bridge communication gaps and ensure everyone understands what is being proposed. JP argues that this approach not only produces fairer outcomes, but can reduce opposition, improve project design, and ultimately speed up development by addressing conflict before it begins.

Key takeaways:

• Early community engagement is crucial for project success.
• Supporting indigenous ownership benefits all stakeholders
• Why partnership improves outcomes for companies and communities alike 
•  What other industries can learn from mining’s evolving approach

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Transcript

0:35

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Shaken Not Burned. I'm your host, Giulia Bottaro. The global race for critical minerals is providing a for governments and the private sector alike to make the most of what resources are available in the ground. In previous episodes under this series, we covered the geopolitical drivers of this trend and the environmental impacts of new practices. such as deep sea mining. In today's episode, we will discuss another crucial aspect of sustainable mining, how it affects and benefits people. Around half of the global untapped resources for energy transition minerals are located on or near the lands of indigenous and peasant peoples, according to a 2022 study by the University of the Free State and the University of Queensland. Establishing mining projects has a profound effect on these communities and this shouldn't be taken lightly. We discussed the opportunities, risks and implications with JP Gladu, founder and principal at indigenous-led consulting firm Mokwateh. Thank you so much JP for being with us today. Julie, it's a pleasure. Thank you for making the time. can you tell me a bit about your roots, your experience and what led you to establish Mokwate? like any, I think story, it started off with an idea and then rapidly changed multiple times throughout my life. I grew up in Thunder Bay. I'm First Nation. I'm Anishinaabe, or in English you would say Ojibwe. Both of my grandmothers were Anishinaabe-Kwai, Ojibwe women from neighboring reserves. I'm now living on the reserve that my dad's, my paternal grandmother was born on. point First Nation or Anishinaabemowin. Nyasha Anishinaabeck, situated about two hours north, northeast of Thunder Bay, which is in a lot of mining around our region. I'm a forester by training with an MBA from Queens and ICD, Institute for Corporate Directors, and a couple honorary doctorate degrees in law and in business. My whole life has, my whole professional career, as well as even my own growing up, has been in the natural resource sector for the most part. And in my career, I have been working with or for Indigenous communities, governments and industry who will intersect with community for 35 years now. And I've had the pleasure of being the CEO of the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business in Toronto. It's over a 40-year-old non-profit organization and I was at the helm for nearly eight years. And currently I work for the firm that I've established. We've got about 30 people across the country and we're only four years old that were doing exceptionally well and I think having really great impact. And I uh sat on a few boards to intersect the mining sector, the Noronk Board before we were purchased by Wiley, which is the Ring of Fire north of here, and Ontario Power Generation and Hydro Development, Nuclear Development Generation. And then currently sit on the board of Suncor, which is Canada's largest integrated mining oil and gas companies as well as the board of Superior Plus which is a propane company here in well North America Toronto based and You know sit on the board by the committees of the BHP for the forum for corporate responsibility, and advise also Domtar which is a global forestry company and lastly just recently appointed to our Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Committee for the Major Projects Office and that's about five months into that role now. So a bit of a busy schedule and lastly just uh also an equity owner in an environmental First Nation owned degreasing company called EnviroBlue doesn't leave me a lot of time for the things that I love to do, which is like fishing and hunting and I've grown up on the land. So just a little bit more background. And as a testament to how much I've spent on the ground, my daughter is now 22. When she was 20, she harvested her first moose, just the two of us out on the land. And she did most of the field dressing and it's a proud moment to have that knowledge passed down to my daughter. yeah, she's quite a remarkable young woman. So fascinating all of it and you are very busy and I really appreciate you sharing the time with us to tell us about these very important topics. I cited in my intro that about half of the global untapped resources of critical, well what many people can call critical minerals, what we define maybe more precisely as energy transition minerals. are located near or on the lands of indigenous and peasant peoples. really I would like to understand what does this mean for the sector, for the communities, and what do we need to bear in mind as we move forward with this industry. That's a great question. Here in Canada, there isn't a stitch of land that is free from Indigenous people, even overlapping territories between nations. I if you carve out the cities, I mean, that's already very extremely developed land. It does definitely create a space, an interesting space, an intersection where industry, government and nations are trying to carve a pathway forward. So when you think about what it means in the past, And companies came in and did whatever they want in our territories. We didn't benefit from jobs, supply chain, ownership, and quite often we were left with a mess from the companies. Certainly was a tumultuous time, but here in Canada, we've certainly won our fair share of court cases. 85 percent I believe the court cases fall in the favor of Indigenous communities due to our constitutionally protected rights in Canada as Indigenous people which is of First Nations, Métis and Inuit, so three groups across the country. certainly in the last decade I would say or so we've seen a big shift where Indigenous communities are now afforded a lot more opportunity to be at the table. Certainly if we're not afforded that space at the table, we can leverage our rights to impact projects and quite often that results in projects not being built. It's already incredibly difficult to get mining projects built in Canada because of the regulatory burden and then you put on top of that and quite frankly should be the first thing companies do and that's the intersection and recognizing the rights and interests of Indigenous people. What we're seeing now is quite remarkable, especially in this time in history with the geopolitical instability and obviously the requirements for critical minerals. Of course, base metals are always going to be an important part of our economy, but in order to get the critical minerals out of the ground, government and industry have recognized that we need to find better ways to work with Indigenous peoples. so, employment and training, uh certainly that has been table stakes now. That is just not even thought it's just what you do. And now we're into supply chain and procurement opportunities for Indigenous businesses. In Canada in 2022, the Indigenous economy eclipsed $60 billion and that continues to grow. And what we're starting to see now is the fact that provinces as well as the federal government have created loan guarantee programs because as a First Nation person living on reserve or nations themselves, it's very difficult to get access to capital because we typically don't own the land because that's held in trust. by the federal government, so we have to find other financial instruments to be able to support our involvement. Because once you have ownership in a project or the tertiary opportunities, whether that be roads or energy or the infrastructure required, then it becomes, know, some will say it's the pierce form of consent. And I would say yes, as long as communities are happy with the outcomes and the planning when it comes to lands, because we still are going to be here after a mine leaves. So it's certainly created a more collaborative space, a more innovative space where Indigenous communities, as I mentioned, are now at the table helping guide the way that roads get built and energy infrastructure gets built. Of course, mines were where the resources are, but they're in the backyards of our community. So it's created a space now where we're finding ways forward. I am very optimistic, as are many, that we're going to see more positive trends towards the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in mining projects in this country. The creation of the Major Projects Office is one primary example that has put pressure on everybody to find more speedy ways to get projects built but certainly allowed a framework to come to the forefront that we all have a part to play in and I'm happy to get into that. Yeah, I was just wondering this momentum to involve indigenous peoples in mining projects and obviously other infrastructure projects as well, right? So in Canada, was this driven by the fact that indigenous rights are included in the constitution? Was it driven by increased awareness among indigenous communities or a mix? The history of Canada has been something else because we're based on treaties, largely, not everywhere. There's modern day treaties now when you look at the Yukon Northwest Territories and the Inuit territories or parts of British Columbia, which is the province on our western part of our country. But a lot of the country has already been settled with traditional treaties. So as an example, the Robinson Superior Treaty was the treaty that my first nation, uh a little bit of a complex story, but you know, Essentially we've adhered to the treaty. And those treaties are designed, they were written and they were designed at the beginning to recognize our inherent rights to the land, to benefit from the land, but also to share the resources with the newcomers. And at the beginning the relationship was relatively balanced because the newcomers knew there's no way they were going to understand our territories or how to live in our territories without our guidance, our, like literally us guiding newcomers on how to live in the North and live across our country. And so, you know, over time, the population grew, governments enacted horrific policies like the residential school policies under our first Prime Minister who... essentially had a policy of killing the Indian and the child by using residential schools to gather kids and bring them to distant schools run by churches where there's a lot of abuses. And that's helping generation after generation after generation that's created incredible trauma. You've seen it in Australia, the lost generation, they've used it in apartheid. They've used this policy to really damage and uh as a way to to put communities to the side so they can do whatever they wanted. in, I think it was in the 50s, we were able to finally hire lawyers who helped fight for our rights. And so this has been a constitutional battle across the country for 60, 70 years, just since we've been in the courts. And we've been fighting for that recognition for a very long time. But since then, we have won significant court cases. Sparrow case, Dogmoke case, there's been many courts, I'm not a lawyer by training, it has certainly let precedent evolve. The precedent has been set and the court cases have allowed us to evolve in these relationships. And now, we're the only people to have constitutionally protected rights in section 35, which essentially means you've got to recognize rights. If you're going to impact your rights, you better have a really good reason and you'd be able you need to be able to accommodate for as well as our interests. And yeah, so essentially anywhere that mining happens or any kind of resource activity happens, communities have rights and interests on those lands, which has now spawned into really interesting agreements, infrastructure ownership across this country and every sector. And it's an incredibly exciting time. But given the geopolitical instability, we've got to try to figure out this relationship in an expedient manner that is going to help industry become more certain. because they need capital, foreign investment examples. The federal government and provincial governments need to get better at the way that the regulatory systems happen. You're starting to see some of this now. And nations as well. We've got to figure out what we need from the land and we have em challenges because our heart and our gut is to protect the land because we've been doing that. But we've also been very, we've been using land ourselves before the newcomers came. So now it's expressing in a modern context what we want from the lands as well. And all this together is creating an interesting soup. But there are some great examples of really great tasting bowls of soup out there that we're all benefiting from. So it's an interesting time for sure. We're not going to get it all done in a year, that's for sure. But you know, I'm hopeful that we're going to set a really good trend over the next five to 10. can you maybe delve into the details about how you see things moving forward and also some examples of the good bowls of soup that you just mentioned? Yeah, good hearty moose stew. I'm going to go across a few sectors here. in the oil and gas sector, I'm on the board of Suncor. We've got multiple indigenous arrangements of equity ownership of billion dollar projects. Example, these tank were two first nations were able to generate equity to participate with 49 % ownership of the tank projects. And there's over a billion dollar project. Most recently, the projects, those are gas lines through BC in Ontario where Enbridge was able to, and this is so important, critical really, because FPIC, Free Prior and Informed Consent, where Enbridge was able to work in BC with 23 First Nation and Métis communities to open up equity ownership in their pre-existing pipelines. And they were able to get that deal done in seven months. And again, that was the largest deal to date. It was about 1.7 won $3 billion and now First Nations and Métis communities own equity in that infrastructure project. It happened again in BC last year with the Stone Le Secay project where 36 First Nations came together and now have ownership in an Enbridge pipeline that runs through their territories. And why they were as successful, I believe, and many believe, because Enbridge really stepped up and provided the resources to ensure that communities were informed. They did that by hiring modelers, financial modelers, biologists, lawyers, supporting their communities at meetings, supporting their travel, supporting all sorts of advisors so that the communities felt that they had the support to participate at the table with Enbridge in an equal manner. Because it doesn't matter what your background is, if you don't feel informed, you're going to say no because you're threatened, the fear of the unknown. It's going to be no because I don't know. Well the communities knew because they were supported. In the mining sector there's the Crawford project in northwest northeastern Ontario. Again First Nations are being afforded the opportunity to uh have equity in a mining project. Communities have businesses in the region that are going to support that mining project. I don't know the particulars but I have no doubt that the First Nations and the mining company have already gone through mine closure and what that would look like to make sure that their territories are rehabilitated and how they're going to protect the land and how they're going to benefit from jobs. Remember when I was telling you at the beginning where projects came in, they made a mess and left without any benefit and all the mess accrued to us. Well, now it's quite the opposite in that communities are benefiting from or at the table and the regulatory and the management of mining sites are reusing the best technology and processes we can to make sure communities benefit. We see it in forestry practices where First Nations now, and our First Nation is the first, and I was the negotiator at the table in 2008, where we now went from 0 % management control to 100 % management control. And what's amazing about that is now that there's a company called RockTech, a German-based lithium miner, that we allow access through our reserve road to do the exploration and planning of lithium. And so we are able to help that company shave months and maybe even years off. off their timelines because we use our management planning process with the Crown Forest Sustainability Act and the Fisheries Act to help with bridge water crossings and road development because we've planned together because our communities are going to benefit from. So there's plenty of opportunities to get this right. So the idea is that the very first step is to involve the communities that would be affected from basically the project design stage. the earlier that you can engage communities, the better. The last thing that we're going to want to see is you do all the work. Then you bring it to our communities and go what do you think? Well, we're going to tell you we're gonna send you up the back door because you didn't Consult or engage us at the very beginning and that's the way that you know The projects were done in the past that is not the way you do projects now and There's a plethora of projects that have been shelved that might get resurfaced They're gonna have to rethink how they go about bringing them back to the forefront and it has to be Immediate with communities to go we're thinking about bringing this project back. Here's what it was What do you want? What do you expect from a project like this? Where do you see your community involved? Do you want equity in this project? Are the provincial or federal programs that we can access to make sure your communities benefit and support? And the wonderful thing about, you know, getting equity and capital is it's low lower costs. We're using government grade ratings, which keeps the interest rates low to participate in these projects, which is good for the mining companies. So it's an exciting place because, now we're co-developing our territory. together and that's really the way it should be. Are you aware of any other countries where this is considered standard practice? I think Australia is another great country as I mentioned. I'm very blessed to do work with BHP globally and you know I've seen we've been to Chile site, you know the capacity of communities definitely varies but if I concentrate on Australia their rights aren't recognized in their constitution you know there was this vote that happened in Australia a year and a half two years ago where the indigenous people were pushing for rights and recognition. I don't know all the details of it, but essentially it went to a vote countrywide and unfortunately it was called The Voice and they voted it down, which I think really has set back the relationship, back to a colonial type of government relationship with its indigenous peoples. However, a company at BHP says, we're going to treat this relationship the way it should be. They're the traditional landowners, their elders are important to process and we're going to co-develop these resources even in pre-existing we're going to find ways to work with the Indigenous nations. The federal government of Australia as well as has been the world leader in procurement with federal contracts making sure that nations have access to supply chains because it's business that helps transform communities and know companies are working with nations uh to develop the assets in concert through their business activities. So, I think Australia is not perfect. but, you know, certainly there's a willingness to figure it out. Why should a company like BHP or maybe a company in another country where indigenous rights are not included in the constitutions or generally not legally recognized, why should the company operating in that environment engage with the communities and gain this social license to operate? If we look at companies, if you operate in Canada... You shouldn't use the lowest denominator in another country to do the least amount of work. You as a company should be committed to global best practices. know, BHP's international Indigenous oh statement basically states that we're going to use the best practices. So companies operating in other territories should take whatever they can from the best practices to support and work with Indigenous communities around the world and apply those same principles. and values to those other countries that don't have the rights. So let's say, you know, South America, Chile, Peru. Firstly, it's the right thing to do. These are the territories of the communities. And secondly, developing a local workforce and a supply chain to support a company that makes good business sense. Wouldn't you agree? Making sure that you've got local people that know how to do the work, train them into upper management whenever possible, whenever possible have indigenous people on your board of directors. That solidifies the relationship, there's less conflict. We've seen some terrible things happen where Indigenous nations have taken people hostage because their homelands are being destroyed. So I mean we got to find ways to be able to support and protect Indigenous people no matter what their Indigenous rights are. But it's also good to the bottom line because instead of having to import a workforce that adds expense, you can develop a local workforce as well as wherever you can in supply chains. So it's the right thing to do and it makes good business sense if you do it correctly. You also mentioned Chile and it made me think about the fact that in some countries like Chile there is a big culture of protests and strikes among workers. So I suppose that also not antagonizing the local communities also leads to perhaps some smoother work once operations are ongoing, right? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the last thing I think that a company would want to do is to have like those significant negative headlines globally, because it does affect share price. It does affect the persona of a company and... that could affect the trust going into other countries or other projects because if you trust is essentially it's all being able to predict somebody's behavior or some company's behavior. And if I trust that you're going to continue to do terrible work in other countries with indigenous people or in the environment and you're starting to come to my country, I'm going to rally the troops and do everything I possibly can to block you because you've done terrible work everywhere else. So you've got to develop the trust with countries and nations, I think, do which is ultimately going to benefit your shareholders because they don't like risk, they don't like conflict. Capital is lazy. It wants to go somewhere where it has to do the least amount of work for the most amount most return. So let's avoid risk and let's make it easy for capital to be deployed by working with Indigenous communities. is called like social risk or it has a specific name right? I guess I haven't really, mean, just want to risk and have a risk. mean, environmental risk, social risk, indigenous risk. I mean, absolutely. There's risk in all sorts of forms, operational risk. There's risk in dam safety. There's, there's risk everywhere. Human life, you know, you've got to be, there's a lot of things that a company has to think about, but it shouldn't be putting indigenous people at the very bottom of that risk profile. Absolutely. Also, we mentioned South America and one thing about the mining sector is that there are a lot of resources in the Global South and often they're being exploited by foreign companies. You also mentioned the fact that involves the indigenous communities so then you can hire local workforce instead of importing the workers from wherever the company is from. So what is good practice in these situations when a foreign company comes in? to ensure benefit sharing in the local community. It was so beautiful. I got to, with the FCR group, visit a couple of Indigenous communities up in one of the assets. What I loved about it was just the vibrancy of Indigenous communities was, I think, largely intact. They were very much farming type of communities. so never assume that you know what a nation or community leadership want. You're only going to understand what they want by sitting down, forming a relationship and constant communication and understanding what is important to them. It reminds me, so going in early and building those relationships and, you know, bringing community around food is really important. Having community support through food and their ceremonies is really important so that there's a cultural exchange I think is critical. You can't put a value on that. How important it is to establish work through Indigenous protocols, through their lands, through their eyes. You know, it's interesting is always reminds me I love telling this story because I'm a forester by training and I was 18 years old I'm almost 53 now. So that's a long time ago and When I was in with my classmates, we were doing some grading of trees and I remember looking at this tree It was a yellow birch and our force tech our leader our prof was like, okay everybody What is that a one two or three meaning one was really good lumber and number like high value number two was like a mid value tree and the tree was mostly pulp, a lower value. So we all stood on the road looking at this tree and now we started going one, two, one, two. And our prof went, you're all wrong. And we went, how can we all be wrong? It's clearly a one or two. says, not one of you got oh off the road to walk around the other side of that tree to see what's there. Because there could be a big split, you wouldn't know it and they'd make that one or two a three because it's all now punky and rotten in the middle. And that's the same thing to companies. You want to understand Indigenous nations, you've got to get out of your offices, you've got to get off the main roads, you've got to go into community and understand who they are. Don't assume that you know who they are. Don't assume you know what they want. Don't assume you know what's important for them. They will tell you, you've got to create the safe place and go through their local protocols to do it. It's not rocket science. It's a relationship. fun to go and travel and meet new people. my God, like this, like why do people travel around the world? People travel around the world because they want to experience different cultures. It's the same thing in industry, these types of activities. yeah, okay. You want to have a career. You know, that's important. You've got to support your family. You want to support. the company but if you have an opportunity to be in community like I live out here on my reserve and you know I've shared with you some pictures and what I get to do. Do any people around the big cities ask when can I come to visit? Can I come out fishing with you? Can I come out hunting with you? Can I be in your community? And I do bring people here because it transforms their thinking. Yeah it transforms your thinking. It just it opens up your world and it's so so beautiful. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Would you say that the Canadian government is doing enough? to safeguard indigenous communities. No, nobody ever does enough. ahh I think our Prime Minister is doing a solid job. his cabinet is doing a good job in creating the space for something that has been so degraded for so long. How do you catch up? A lot of our communities are still suffering from lack of drinking water. So when I say a good job, I don't mean that's a blanket statement. Our communities have been struggling for a very long time with... you know, really quite often third world living conditions, poor housing, not reliable energy, poor drinking water. So there are a lot of those communities, but there's also a lot of communities that are doing exceptionally well. And that's because of their locations and it's. You can see that where there's economic activity, communities these days, that's that good job part, I think. At least there's a frame now that we can get around and make things better. But it's only been recent. We haven't figured it all out yet. There's still a lot of conflict. There are a lot of communities pushing back. ah Bill C-5 is this Build Canada Act, or Canada Build Act, which is looking to streamline processes to get projects built in this country and communities are very nervous about that. But I will say this. Government is really important for creating the policy for industry and nations to find solutions going forward. I like to talk about this. I call it the market check when it comes to indigenous communities and projects. So the other day I was in Toronto and I was doing a talk on a panel and I asked, any bankers in the room? Or financiers? And there was about a dozen hands that went up. I went, great. How exciting is it to be having this half a trillion dollars worth of infrastructure that needs to be built in our country? And I said, now keep your hand up if you're going to invest in a project that doesn't have Indigenous support. all their hands went down. It goes back to what I was saying earlier. is lazy. It doesn't want to do a lot of work for big returns. It's also risk-adverse. Capital will not go flow to projects that are being blocked or... protested by Indigenous nations and communities. It's just not. So it's like the market check that actually comes into play here. And so that's why industry and government have to do a better job in aligning and creating space for communities to support, which will attract more lower cost capital. And so... That's the space we're really trying to figure out. It's not perfect, but I'm optimistic because I'm seeing really great projects and opportunities from nations that are owning ports. New build out in, it's called the new builder, new dock in our Eastern part of our country. the Halapu nation that own 95 % of a 65 million dollar project and it's gonna be amazing because they can do shipbuilding and repairs and I've visited the site. It's amazing. Communities are doing extraordinary work across this country now all over the place. It's not steady everywhere but certainly there are plenty of examples where amazing projects and relationships have been formed around business opportunities. So would you say that the majority of First Nations in Canada are in favour of this major infrastructure? Are there any environmental concerns? Because obviously we're talking about mining, oil and gas even, shipbuilding, all of these things have a toll on the environment. Yeah. It's a spectrum. There are communities that support communities that are against and there's communities still on the fence, but I would say a large number of them. I don't know if it's a majority, but I would say a large number of communities are becoming much more supportive of projects. For instance, you'd have to go to uh Stephen Buffalo's website at the Indian Resource Council. There are like 170-ish First Nations that have assets in oil and gas in this country. ah There are thousands of employees in the forestry sector, tens of thousands of employees, and in the mining sector, and business activity. Just like any community, you're going to have people that are very supportive of projects and people that aren't. Even with an individual community, then you grow that. 633 First Nations are not going to agree on everything in this country, nor should we ever expect them to. But creating the space for communities to have conversations and and shared decision making is what we need to strive for. But there are a plethora of amazing business activities that have happened as a result of building good frameworks to build trust and strong outcomes as a result. Yeah, when we talk about mining project and you mentioned this a while ago in the interview, it takes a very long time to bring a mine from design to operation. can take 10, 15 years in general across the globe. So we have the private sector and a lot of governments really hungry for these minerals and they want to shorten the timelines when it's from the government. It's all about permitting, right? So we talk about shortening the permitting timeline. But then on the other side, we have people concerned about the environment, indigenous peoples asking for more safeguards. So how can we reconcile these two stances, which to me look slightly opposite? Yeah, that's a great, that's a great, that's a great question or a great scenario. Like, yes, you know, absolutely. Remember that we're in right now, but, but, but no way should it take 19 years to build a 20 years to build a project. So the Ring of Fire, just in this community here, like I live about 150 or less kilometers south of the road that goes off the main highway up to Ariland and then up to Martin Falls and Webiquay where the Eagle Nest project is, where Wilding Middles hopes to develop mines. It was blocked for a very long time because communities were not at the table. Quelle surprise. It was blocked for very long time because the First Nations have had no provincial support or federal support for some of the issues that I've talked to you about housing, energy, clean water. The First Nations are now being supported in a big way by the province. think it was $130 million, $35 million announcement recently to support community infrastructure, to support the community's growth, participation in this project. The First Nations are now the ones designing the road through the environmental assessment process and they're co-leading that. And quelle surprise, we got a road that's gonna start being developed this spring. Imagine that, communities we want to be treated as equals and when you do that good things can happen so We've got to just flip the script in support communities, participation at all levels of a project from the EAs to project inception to construction to operations to reclamation. And when you do that, you're going to enlarge more times than not, you're going to get the support of community. then, you know, the environment, like I've worked for environmental groups and that's really important. I would fight like heck if any kind of development happened on this lake that I live in. fish from and hunt from. It's such a visceral thing for communities, but environmental groups, sometimes the further left ones, I won't name any, will kind of portray themselves as these people that are supporting rights or lawyers and advisors who are blockers of any kind of development or opportunity for communities. And I can't get behind those types of organizations or people because they're blocking a community's ability for sustainable future as well because you need to be able to generate economies so that you're not dependent on table scraps that the government typically gives communities. So we need to be figuring out a way to develop. oh So asking the question about how. Nations need to start asking questions about how are we going to do this? Not no, no, no, but how, how, how? How are we going to respect our rights? How are we going to protect the environment? How are we going to develop the jobs? How are we going to develop the projects? How, you know, always be asking. It's like a kin to sending your kids to the grocery store with a grocery list of things not to get. We need to be very crystal clear in what we want and how we're going to get it together. And that, you know, putting nations at the front to balance all those interests is is a big responsibility and opportunity. I suppose it's the idea of shortening the timeline for project connects with that idea that the sooner you involve the indigenous and local communities, the more time you don't waste essentially. So maybe it does go hand in hand, Yeah, absolutely. And you got to support them. You can't just say, okay, what do you think? And you've got a chief in council that quite often you have many of these chiefs well intentioned. My dad's one of them. He's a chief, grade five education. He's been chief for almost 20 years. But if he doesn't have the support around him, it's really difficult for him to be an effective leader. So he's hired lots of good, smart people around him. A lot of these Northern communities, the leadership doesn't have the experience or the education. you've got to be able to support them so that they can make informed decisions. So yes, put communities in the front, but you've got to make sure that they've got the capacity, resources to do the work. Thank so much JP for this amazing chat. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that we really should have? really proud to call myself a First Nation Canadian. I'm Canadian, I'm Indigenous, I've been so blessed to work across resource sectors and I've seen so many beautiful outcomes as a result of hard work, not only by Indigenous leaders but also corporate leaders who see Indigenous people as friends, as allies, as business partners. And the more that we can change the mindset or at least the approach by asking and reflecting as leaders. I'm talking about corporate leaders to go how can we work progressively in and with community at the end of the day they win the communities win and in a time of The whims of some international leaders creating so much uncertainty, we have to find our own ways forward. we need to be able to move and act quickly because the world is just becoming more uncertain. The more certainty that we can create in our own relationships, the stronger we're going to be as a nation. And indigenous people... our Canada's competitive edge, if you want to work that way, we can be that edge to support national growth and opportunity and certainty. Wonderful, thank you so much again. I think the takeaway of this episode is fairly simple, just involve the communities. Two words, I saw three words. no, involve and support. Thank you very, very much for sharing your expertise and your experience. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in once again. 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