Episode 047: Irene Henriques
Canada has a long and troubled history when it comes to dealing with the First Nations of North America. Achieving reconciliation between Canada and the First Nations is an enormous challenge that covers every aspect of life. I'm not sure where the economy sits on the list of priorities, but it's definitely an important factor in reconciliation. Can the business professor offer any suggestions? Irene Henriques trying, she is Professor of Sustainability and Economics at the Schulich School of Business and her research focus is Indigenous entrepreneurship. Her work has profoundly optimistic, but also very realistic about the need to dismantle colonial institutions and build new economic relationships grounded in the agency of Indigenous peoples.
Transcript
Cameron: Irene, welcome to the podcast.
Irene: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Cameron: It's good to have you here. Uh, tell me about what you study.
Irene: Well, first I'm a professor of sustainability and economics at the Schulich School of Business and, um, I'm an avid skier and a proud mother of twins. So my concern for social impact is always there. My interest right now is social impact, in everything I study, and understanding where businesses stand with regards to society as a whole. I started in the environmental field, and then I moved on to the general field called CSR, which is Corporate Social Responsibility. We've done so much on CSR and businesses but the majority of CSR studies don't look at impact. They don't look at impact. They say it's doing good, but they don't show it doing good. So, I was shocked. So when I had the opportunity to work with Rick Colburn at Carleton University, Ana Maria Peredo, University of Ottawa, and Bob Anderson at University of Regina, he said, Irene, we really want to look at impact, economic reconciliation with Indigenous communities and things. I said, oh, absolutely. I just said, this is perfect, right? It's not only going to use my skill set, if you will, but also I'm going to learn myself in understanding what's going on.
So I need to say something right away. So in order to understand this area, first history matters. It's so fundamental to understand, um, sort of any type of relation with Indigenous communities or Indigenous leaders or Indigenous businesses. Any non-Indigenous scholar or even an industry leader who seeks to work alongside Indigenous businesses or communities must learn about the history. Their treaties and their needs. And understanding, when before the country was even colonized, what happened. And basically, the Indigenous peoples, they were the ones who helped the settlers live. It was very cold. If it wasn't for them, the colonies wouldn't have survived. But when the power transferred, when all of a sudden they weren’t needed as much, then the power dynamics went against them. Right? More and more people came. They lost their land. They lost their way of life. Reserves. The whole thing started happening. So this was many years in the making and it will take many years in the future to work alongside them to build, rebuild that trust. It took many years to break it, it's going to take many years to actually reinvigorate it.
My second point is that working alongside organizations and communities and leaders requires commitment. It takes time to establish this trust. So, this grant that I received in 2018, I was actually grateful for COVID because it slowed us down. The reality is that to make connections, to communicate, to go to community, to bring them together, to come together with us, took time. And the COVID period stopped us in our tracks, but it allowed us to sort of pivot and start establishing links to Indigenous organizations. We established a link to CANDO, which is the council for Aboriginal economic developers. As scholars, we are always in a hurry, unfortunately, right? Because we have to go up for tenure or our grant is almost finishing. So we're always in a hurry. And they constantly tell me, no, Irene, you’ve got to slow down. No, it's not going to happen today. So that's what it taught me. It's about relations.
The third point is, most Indigenous people have a land-based, holistic and relational worldview, not transactional. So that means that the Indigenous worldview is both spiritual and material, but it's also expression of their identity and culture. So in the past, when they were not permitted to speak their own language, not permitted to do their own customs, that created a lot of damage in their community. And so right now there is a lot of, you know, community coming together. There's a lot of powwows. There's celebrating their culture. Extremely important. And the youth and the elders are very important. So in this case, I'm blessed to be working with Indigenous scholars who have welcomed me into this world. And my job is to take my time, listen, learn, and then say, okay, what do you want? So that's the part about why I think this research is important, because I think I'm asking the right question. So for social impact, I think that's really important.
Cameron: Can you tell me about CANDO?
Irene: Yes. CANDO is, is actually in Alberta. It's a not for profit organization that is Indigenous controlled, community based, and membership driven. It's basically economic development officers in Indigenous communities whose job it is is to increase economic development in their communities. So what happens there is that they represent every region in Canada, from BC, all the way to PEI. So they have members and they have conferences. They bring people together. They have award ceremonies for the best businesses, best economic development. I went to those, it was amazing. They are supporting each other. They talk about it. They share their ideas. And they lead. Their vision, the vision of CANDO, is leading the way for Indigenous economic growth and prosperity. What they're saying is, “On our terms.” Right? And so what are the needs and how can we help you? It's a very small organization, but it has a huge punch. So that's why I'm so proud to have been working with them and supporting them in anything that they have asked me to do.
Cameron: Can you tell me a little bit of what your assumptions about entrepreneurship might have been like going into this research and how your understanding of entrepreneurship has changed?
Irene: Yes. You know, what's really fascinating, you always think it's the one person doing something, the entrepreneur, the individual. But, what I learned is, someone opening a gas station, that's entrepreneurship, What you realize for them is their opportunity to participate in the economy becomes entrepreneurial, but it's not only for them, the individual, but also for the community, their families, it's for what's going on.
So them opening a store, right, in their community is huge because it's their store and they can sell what's important to their community. And now what they're realizing is that they also want to have more land. So the self determination becomes extremely important. What do we want to build? What are the needs out there, but also what can we, how can we make this pie bigger, because we are contributors as well to this entire economy.
It's not us against them. It's how do we build this together?
There is a lot of bias. Right? Prejudice. We have to understand that too. And so how do we eliminate some of that, reduce some of that? How can we work together to solve problems?
Some Indigenous communities are working with municipalities, others aren't. Depends on what kind of relations. And so relations are being developed right now between different levels of government. And also with other businesses. So, you know, if you want to do some extraction, what does that mean for my way of life? How can we work together so that you understand what I need for my land and what you're going to be extracting, what that means for me? These are the questions that are being asked all the time. And the community is not only going to get involved at the beginning, they want to be involved throughout the entire process. Right? Not only in getting permission to do something, but also throughout the process. Are you going to be hiring some Indigenous youth, et cetera? What kind of things are going on? And then when you close the plant or you close the mine, what are the consequences? What is our role? Right? Are you going to be bringing back the land to where we want it to be? Do you understand where that "we want it to be" means? So those are the conversations that have to be had. Unusual conversations, but very important conversations. Because they're not stakeholders, they're rights holders. They want to be part and parcel of that decision making as well.
This is what's happened in the Mi'kmaq, for example. They took over the fishery, right, and they bought that large company. They said, we want to do this. And it's good. It's fantastic what they're doing. And so they're getting into the business, they're learning, but also, they're bringing their worldview of what matters. And so this is what I find exciting, and trying to establish case studies. That's what I'm working on right now, looking at case studies so our students can learn how to work alongside, how to co-create something that's exciting. So that's what I hope, and that's what happened with my work with CANDO.
I'll give a good example. Canada now, starting in 2024, five per cent of all procurement contracts from the federal government has to go to Indigenous businesses. Wow! This is like $2.1 billion, right, and five per cent's a lot of money, right? That's, that's huge.
The problem is we don't know what the needs are. Is there a mismatch? And how do you get these contracts? And what is an Indigenous business, right? There's all sorts of definitions.
So there's a lot of things going on and there's a lot of uncertainty on both sides. So we need first to find out information, what's going on now. In 2023, we worked with CANDO and did a procurement, finding out what all types of procurement that's going on right now with Indigenous businesses. So we, we sent out 3,000 and we got 5.4% back, so we did really well. We found out what's going on. And these businesses, some of them are unbelievably successful with the province, right? They do construction, so that there's a match, right? They're much closer. At the federal level it was less that case, right? Because one of the things, the number one thing federal government needs, is IT and furniture, right? So, you know, Indigenous business and furniture, and there are Indigenous businesses that are doing furniture, but the purpose of this Indigenous or social procurement is to help that group. So the question is, is it helping or are you going to get just some person, a small company, where one person's Indigenous but they contract everything else to all the other companies. So the purpose is not being met. So this is the question that now, is there another way of doing this to really do and meet the purpose of this? It's to build capacity of these communities or these businesses. That's what we want to do. How do we do this? So, the mismatch. How do we get this knowledge out to Indigenous businesses, that this is available? How do you apply for it? How do you reduce the impediments?
Because some of these contracts are too big. Can we break them down in ways that can help them? So, you know what I did? I took the data and I got a map of where the federal government does, where the Indigenous businesses are. What I found out is the heat map showed it's all in Ottawa. Oh boy. That can't be right. The Indigenous communities are all over. So what can we do to sort of spread this out? How can this be done? The East Coast is doing really well, they're really getting some really interesting federal contracts, in shipping and things like that. So that's what I'm trying to say. That excites me because it means that I can get into the data and say this is where the issues are, and are there other procurement methods that are different, that meets the needs of communities. So that's what I'm doing right now.
Some of the sort of more recent research is digging deep into economics and supply chain. But it's also looking at impact because I was told that those people who do get those contracts, it changes their world. Absolutely changes their world. They can hire Indigenous people. They also are able to increase their capacity. They actually have more networks. Some of them even have gone ISO 14000, they realize that this is important. And they're interested in business schools, right, because they get students from there and they're doing so much.
And financing is extremely important. That needs to be addressed. And so those are all the things, the impediments that we got out of our survey. Which is very useful because it's very difficult to collect data. Government cannot, of course. There's not this trust. But there was a trust with CANDO and us in sending this out. So I was very excited about that.
Cameron: Tell me about scaling up from your first example, which was the gas station, to larger organizations that are capable of taking on a relationship of equals with the province or with the federal government.
Irene: The Cree in Saskatchewan have done that. They have a whole economic development system where they got different communities together. Instead of competing against each other, they compete for the same contract. For the, for the construction contracts and they get it, right? So that's how they've scaled up.
They said, I'm not going to compete against one on one. Let's work together to do that. And once they get that skillset, they help each other. Right? This is how you do it. Let me show you how. And so this is what they're also asking government and other people to do is, how do I do this, you know, request for, for proposal? How do I do that?
That's how they scale up. They're sharing the information and they build that up. And it's fascinating. It's great because then they share resources. They get the money to do it. The banks are figuring this out, right, because Indigenous businesses get these contracts and getting the money to buy equipment.
The land is one of the issues, too. With the new treaties, they're getting the land, and so in order to come in, they said, look, if you want to do anything on our land, you have to go talk to us. And that's right there, that agency, that power comes, you could tell it changes the entire community. One thing they always say is the social part, “The money that we get also has to build for our own community.” They build community centers. So it's very important that it comes back to community and what's good for the community and also the entire region. And so they benefit, the government benefits.
There's so many young people there. There's opportunities. But again, how do we bridge the education system? We have an education system that we have to think about, too. How do we get them involved or interested? And then how do we provide something that they need, right? They could say, “Well, I don't know about that. You know, you’re just taking, always taking and not giving back.” Is there something wrong with this? What does giving back mean? And so that question, asking that question in business school, what does giving back mean, would be, I think, fascinating. What is “giving back” in the organization?
Cameron: Well what can business schools learn from this? Because it sounds like you're talking about organizations that have different goals besides profit maximization and potentially different governance structures, governance mechanisms.
Irene: Yes, and they do. It's much more relational. So, hmm, the question is, we're where we are, insofar as our planetary issues, for a reason. Right? We've always been this “Wild West” in extraction. Scarcity. And those who can pay, get. Question is, you know, it's getting more and more difficult. There are going to be whole places in the world, islands, that they're going to have to move people from because they have no more water. Not because the islands would disappear, but the potable water is no longer there, because the salt water is getting in. So we have to think much bigger. As a business, say, well, what does that mean for the world? It means a lot of more conflict. It could be a lot more uncertainty. So how can we be part of the solution rather than just creating more of the problem? And I know we're trying to go into batteries and EV and all. I think what we haven't yet started thinking about is what is our business role in this. If 80% of all carbon comes from the oil and gas sector, we know what the answer is.
We need to do something about that.
Cameron: I want to ask you about that, because you're describing a long term project where you are learning so much. How do you then become an agent of change? What's the impact of your research going to be?
Irene: The impact of my research is going to talk to others and saying, how can you solve it? Right? How can you share your two-eyed vision of how to make this work? So this company, for example, took over the fisheries, In some cases, fishing companies have taken all the fish, right? So how are they going to handle that, to look at it more holistically? Maybe their worldview would be quite different. So what I'm trying to say is that if I can put it out there, to get someone to even just, hum, the thinking, and saying how can we potentially do it differently? And then how do we share this knowledge?
Our whole, sort of, model's going to have to change, and that's what the elders have said, when I've spoken to a few of them, they've said, “Waste, the waste is incredible.” Um, but believe it or not, my dad used to say that, my late father, “The waste is incredible. Why are you wasting so much food?”
And so these are the things that we come to because of abundance. And so this idea of scarcity, we don't understand it as well as we can. So this is something that I think, this knowledge has been so important. But the one thing I want to say, and I think I have to give you a quote. This is from JP Gladu. He was the former CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. And this is what he said, and I loved what he said, and I use it always in all my papers. So he says, "We cannot reverse hundreds of years of unequal relationships overnight. A history of broken treaties, territorial dispossession, reserves and residential schools will take time to overcome. This sad legacy is reflected in contemporary Indigenous culture, education, health and wellness, and in economic marginalization of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada. Without economic reconciliation, our unequal trade relation will continue. We face a unique opportunity to remake the once vibrant relationship between Aboriginal peoples and businesses in the rest of Canada."
I think Canada leads many other countries in trying to establish this relationship. We have far to go. We've done lots of damage. I think that if we can just learn from this group more, be open to it, there is so much to learn. And also we see the pain, right? And the pain has gone through generations and it will be very difficult. So you have to be sympathetic, understanding, and you can't sort of be arrogant. You can't say, I know this, you don't. cannot do that. Everyone has their life experience and has to be respected it's amazing and what I hope to do is that my work contributes a little bit in either helping non-Indigenous people try to think about it in a different way, or even, you know, governments saying how can we do this?
But in social procurement, maybe you need to have a different relationship. In so far as, okay, what can we do? Can it be smaller? Whatever. So in other words, we have to go a little bit further, because this economic reconciliation is happening now, but it has to be put forth in a way that we're moving forward. And I think our students know this already. I mean, when I talk about this in my classes, they go, “Yes.” What I hope is that we can also in our school have more Indigenous students coming to us and feeling welcome, but, uh, yeah, that's my hope.
You know what's fascinating? As you know, many of the resources are up north now, with treaties, Indigenous people own the land and companies have to negotiate. And sometimes the government would never think about these northern communities until they realized that the resource was there. That's in our history paper.
They didn't renew or try to negotiate new treaties until they realized they need to, because they wanted to have access to land. So that's very transactional, in that sense, which is really a shame. What the North is trying to do now as well is something called Indigenous Urban Reserves. So they're in small communities, but what they want to do is bring it. Because you see a lot of Indigenous peoples have come to urban cities to find jobs. “Let me create an urban reserve. But it's away from where I'm located, where I actually have Indigenous businesses, Indigenous ideas, Indigenous incubators, Indigenous housing.” In Vancouver, they're doing that. What they're doing is giving low rent, low rent for their community. They're people who need to build something there. They're making the pie bigger. They're bringing businesses, Indigenous businesses, to that urban reserve, they can sell to people in the big cities. Regina, number one in this. Saskatchewan is one of the leaders in urban reserves. First Nation University is an urban reserve. And so what that does is just, it opens up whole opportunities. They're not taxed. Right. I mean, that means that they can price lower than others. And so these are the things that they are doing and it becomes really fascinating. The pie is getting bigger. So the money that they get is not only going back into the same community, but also, the pie is getting bigger. And so that's one of the things that they're doing. And yes, location matters. Absolutely matters. They know most about the land. What they want is they want to say in how things are done.
So I speak into an elder and what he told me is, “Irving, when they're clear cutting the forest, they don't understand. If you clear cut near a stream, all that silt is going to go into the waters and our fish are going to die, and we would have showed them don't do that. This is how you do it. But they don't listen. They're not here.”
And that's something that they say, especially if you have an multinational that's not there: “They're not where we are. They don't see what we see and if they saw and if they spoke to us, we would be able to share what the issues are. Instead, we have to, you know, put up roadblocks so that they listen. And then, of course, the perception of us in the media is that we're, you know, troublemakers, which is not at all. We're stewards. We're trying to help, that's not how we're viewed.” Which is a shame.
Treaty arrangements are so fundamental, right? It's that self determination in land. So I'll give you an example. In Ontario, there's very few urban reserves, right? Because they can actually, they have treaties, but you know, B. C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, they're leaders, right? And even the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia, around that area, they're really thriving because those treaties are quite important. Land is important. And so that's the idea that it's acknowledged that it's theirs. That acknowledgement is important. And so that's where they say, you know, that right now in Anishinaabe, they say that when we talk about that, we never, ever gave up our land.
They say that for a reason: “We never gave it up. Just so you know that we're coming. We want it acknowledged. We want to receive, right, all the lost opportunities. We need to feel that we're getting something back our children, progeny, for seven generations in the future we need to feel.”
Cameron: I know that there's a lot of Indigenous people in cities in Canada. Did you get a chance to look at Indigenous entrepreneurship in the cities?
Irene: That's where the urban reserves are going. That's where I'm just starting right now and seeing what's going on in these urban reserves in the cities. They're trying to do that more and more. again, it's how do they get started, getting, you know, borrowing money, right? Where do you get? So it's, these are all the things that, that now banks are looking into.
Cameron: You've mentioned the role of finance several times, and I'm just wondering, given the size of some startup businesses, uh, how do you go about achieving an impact, from the perspective of finance, in a way that, that moves the needle for some of the large lenders? Like for one of the chartered banks in Canada to move the needle on its level of support for sustainable Indigenous businesses, it takes an awful lot of small loans if all of the borrowers are tiny.
Irene: There are Indigenous banks now, right, that in communities that are doing that, and they're looking into that. Also, Vancity in Vancouver is one of the biggest ones who are very much promoting small business and Indigenous businesses. The bigger banks are slowly having people, because when I go to these meetings, the banks, they send a rep, right? They do send reps. They see that demand and CANDO and the CCBA as well. The businesses are, they're now linking very much.
And also the money that, that, that some of these communities are getting from these treaties, right? When there’s economic reconciliation, the banks are very interested as well, saying, okay, where do we go? All that investment, right, and then they're saying, okay, this is what we want to do.
And Indigenous people are taking their own money and investing in their communities and saying, this is the type of business we want in our community and this is what we want to do. So that's where they want to, you know, now say, what further can we do? How can we create more jobs? How can we do that? They want to grow as much as possible. And they also need, um, businesses to start hiring also. Um, not as a token, right? As a skillset.
Cameron: Thank you so much for talking with me, Irene. been a pleasure.
Irene: It's a pleasure. It was all mine. Thank you.
Links
Irene Henriques’s faculty profile page
LinkedIn: Irene Henriques
Articles by Irene Henriques
The role of place in sustainability
Transforming Indigenous procurement
Indigenous entrepreneurship? Setting the record straight
Credits
Host and producer: Cameron Graham
Co-producer: Andrew Micak
Photos: York University
Music: Musicbed
Tools: Descript, Squadcast
Recorded: September 16, 2024
Location: Toronto
