A University of Victoria-based research team has received a $2.5 million grant that will help Indigenous communities assess development proposals on their lands.
The federal grant will fund the Balance Co-Lab, an international collaboration of Indigenous governments – including the T’Sou-ke Nation – researchers and non-governmental organizations (NGO) that will help ensure Indigenous values, knowledge and concerns are at the forefront of development decision-making.
Those members will co-create customized sustainability assessment systems (SAS) with the goal of enhancing the capacity of Indigenous organizations as they build environmental stewardship programs and evaluate development opportunities, a UVic news release said.
The initiative is critical to the empowerment and self-determination of Indigenous governments and peoples, said Cloy-e-iis Judith Sayers, president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council and a senior advisor of the project.
“My hope for this project is that the model empowers every Indigenous community to assess sustainability on their own terms, do their own development and determine if others wanting to do development in their territories is acceptable to them to protect their lands, waters, resources and ability to exercise their rights,” she said.
The Toquaht Nation in B.C. has used sustainability assessment systems to evaluate the impact of its own economic-development efforts since 2018, while New Zealand’s Maori used the framework to determine the best approach to environmental remediation after the largest maritime disaster in the country’s history struck in 2011.
The sustainability assessment systems evaluate the potential effects of a proposal by looking at four areas of well-being: economic, environmental, cultural and community. When something like a waterfront resort is proposed, the affected Indigenous community would consider the potential effect on each well-being area.
“This advances the ability for Indigenous Peoples to govern their territories in ways that align with their own values and governance practices,” said UVic associate professor Matthew Murphy, the Balance Co-Lab’s project director.
Indigenous Peoples have a right to use impact assessment systems that integrate Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, the release said. That’s been advanced in part thanks to B.C. and Canada enshrining the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law.
The project reflects self-determination elements of UNDRIP, including “each nation or each Indigenous People has a right to determine for themselves their own form and path to development using their own governance structures and their own knowledge systems.”
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