Indigenous Negotiations

Firelight supports Indigenous Nations, Governments, and Communities to negotiate and implement strong, modern agreements with companies that can generate substantial benefits, while also protecting their lands and ways of life.

Our approach is to take direction from the communities, often working alongside a strong community-based negotiator, and with community-based teams.

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What We Do

We support Nations to negotiate and implement strong, modern agreements with companies and non-Indigenous governments. We offer technical support, research services, and program review and evaluation, especially as it informs agreement negotiations. We take direction from the Nation, often working alongside a strong community-based negotiator and community-based teams. Our work can be tailored to a variety of needs, from short training workshops to extensive community-based support in negotiations, to planning and support for the implementation of benefits. We provide corporate and resource analysis, financial reviews, and mining project review with our Mineral Assessment Tool (MAT).

Areas of Work

Our research and technical support services for agreements, negotiations, and implementations include:

Technical and strategic support in Agreements negotiation and implementation
Project management
Training and workshops for staff, community members and leadership on various topics such as mining, IBA-specific training, negotiation strategies, and implementation of agreements
Administrative support
Research such as financial reviews and socio-economic analysis to understand
impacts and highlight opportunities and barriers

Supporting Impact Benefit Agreement Negotiations

The process of an Impact Benefit Agreement Negotiation at Firelight intends to centre the rights, knowledge, and expertise of Indigenous Nations.

Experience

Our multi-disciplinary team members have strong backgrounds in social sciences, resource management, economics, mining, cultural heritage, implementation, and negotiations. We have experience working alongside Indigenous Nations on the negotiation and implementation of Impact Benefit Agreements and Government-to-Government Agreements in every region of Canada. Our work brings together research from many areas, including Indigenous knowledge, stewardship and ecology, livelihood and socio-economic analyses, to understand potential impacts and benefits, highlight opportunities and barriers, and inform the negotiation mandate and strategy.

Training

Firelight provides training, mentorship, and guidance through all stages of the process of negotiating agreements with companies and non-Indigenous governments. This includes helping Nations and companies to define and build what they need to successfully implement an agreement after it has been negotiated. We also provide training sessions and workshops on negotiation and implementation of agreements with companies and non-Indigenous governments, using our flagship Impact and Benefit Agreement Community Toolkit as a resource.

Contact

Lilith Wyatt - Program Manager, Indigenous Negotiations

MA Environmental Education and Communication

Kingston, ON

Email: lilith.wyatt@firelight.ca Phone: (519) 829-6035

"We are supporting a chief negotiator working with many Nations in negotiations. It has been hard work, but unity among the communities has never fallen apart. It is incredibly moving to see the friendship and self-determination at the table. These strong relationships are also an outcome of the Impact Benefit Agreement process."

Dr. Ginger Gibson

Team Lead, Indigenous Negotiations

Example Projects

Mineral Assessment Tool

The Mineral Assessment Tool (MAT) can assess which projects are more likely to turn into a mine, and generate positive or negative impacts. The MAT can also determine where to invest a community's limited time and resources to inform community planning, consult community members, negotiate agreements, and more.

This tool was developed in collaboration with Keewatin Tribal Council (KTC) in response to a growing number of mineral projects affecting the KTC Territory. The KTC MAT Report provides an example of the MAT Tool in use.

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IBA Community Toolkit

IBA Community Toolkit The IBA Community Toolkit is a free resource for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities in Canada considering impact and benefit agreements (IBAs), specifically those with mining companies. While the Toolkit focuses primarily on the mining industry, many of the issues and processes addressed in the Toolkit are relevant to the making of agreements in other industry sectors and contexts, including protected areas, oil and gas, hydro and forestry. The goal of the Toolkit is to help communities, negotiators and consultants achieve positive agreements for Aboriginal communities. The Toolkit was authored by Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh (Griffith Business School) and Ginger Gibson (Firelight).

Download

Impact Assessment in the Arctic: Emerging Practices of Indigenous-led Review.

The report is leading the way in identifying the strategic approaches Indigenous governments are taking as they lead their own major project assessments. By doing this, Indigenous governments are breaking ground, ensuring culture, language and way of life are central to the review of projects, and asserting their rights and responsibilities for environmental stewardship and land and resource decision-making in innovative and concrete ways.

The report, put together by Firelight, is based on case studies from across Canada, is being released to participants from the eight member nations of the Arctic Council who are in Yellowknife this week for a Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) of the Arctic Council Workshop on “Best Practices in Arctic Environmental Impact Assessment”. It will inform their project that aims to identify best practice in environmental assessment.

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