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How can IA practitioners apply culturally relevant GBA Plus during the public engagement components of the IA process with Indigenous groups?

Canada’s Impact Assessment Act mandates meaningful participation and the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge throughout the IA process. When applying culturally relevant GBA Plus to engagement with Indigenous groups, IA practitioners must commit to ongoing collaboration and inclusive practices. To ensure a culturally relevant GBA Plus approach as part of the engagement activities of an IA, practitioners can follow these guiding principles:

  1. Transparency: Co-create processes with Indigenous rightsholders, emphasizing especially engagement with Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit and gender-diverse peoples, provide clear information, and ensure accessibility, including in Indigenous languages.
  2. Relevance: Listen to and address issues affecting diverse members of Indigenous groups, particularly women, girls, and Two-Spirit and gender-diverse peoples, and consider them meaningfully. If issues affecting diverse members of Indigenous groups are not meaningfully listened to and addressed, the potential effects include significant risks to their health and safety.
  3. Inclusiveness: Remove participation barriers, respect cultural norms, and adapt methods to meet the needs of distinct Indigenous groups.
  4. Accountability: Share insights transparently and demonstrate how community input has influenced decisions.
  5. Flexibility: Continuously learn from feedback and adapt engagement strategies to foster collaboration and innovation.

By adhering to these principles, IA practitioners can not only fulfill legal and ethical obligations but also enhance the effectiveness and fairness of the IA process. Integrating culturally relevant GBA Plus into the engagement components of the process strengthens project outcomes, builds trust with Indigenous groups, and contributes to broader goals of social justice and reconciliation.

Additional details

To apply culturally relevant GBA Plus during the public engagement components of the process, when the focus is on Indigenous groups, IA practitioners can rely on a wide set of principles. 

Transparency: It is important to communicate openly with diverse members of affected Indigenous groups about engagement opportunities, clearly stating the purpose and how their input will be used. Open communication can be facilitated by:

  • Co-creating engagement processes with Indigenous rightsholders, including Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit and gender-diverse peoples.
  • Providing accurate and timely information and intersectional data relevant to Indigenous Peoples.
  • Allowing ample time for participant preparation and participation and flexibility with the dates and times selected for gatherings and opportunities to share input.
  • Publishing comprehensive and accessible summary reports, making data openly available when feasible. 
  • Providing support for oral traditions and ensuring accessibility in Indigenous languages. 

Relevance: Actively listen to and engage with diverse members of Indigenous groups on matters that are significant to them. Ensure that there is a mutual understanding of proposed discussion topics by allocating sufficient time for Indigenous groups, including Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse peoples, to clearly articulate how they are directly impacted by ongoing and emerging issues. This can include:

  • providing multiple opportunities for community members to provide their input to influence decisions.
  • ensuring that there’s sufficient space for Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse peoples to contribute.

Inclusiveness: Embrace a diversity of Indigenous perspectives and experiences, striving to remove physical, cultural, geographical, linguistic, digital, and other barriers to participation. Offer multiple engagement avenues that resonate with Indigenous ways of knowing and being. This can include:

  • conducting engagements in locations accessible and meaningful to Indigenous groups.
  • providing information in both official languages and Indigenous languages as needed.
  • offering materials in a variety of formats to accommodate different communication needs.
  • designing inclusive processes that respect and reflect the cultural norms and values of the affected Indigenous groups.
  • adapting engagement methods to align with the needs and preferences of diverse Indigenous participants, including women, girls, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse peoples, people with disabilities, and so on.
  • actively participating in existing community dialogues when invited, while respecting Indigenous governance structures.
  • listening attentively and without bias and nurturing long-term relationships built on trust and respect.

Accountability: Commit to transparently sharing what is learned from Indigenous participants – including women, girls, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse peoples, Elders, people with disabilities and others – and explain how their insights inform decisions and actions. Accountability includes:

  • providing prompt feedback to Indigenous groups following engagements.
  • maintaining ongoing communication throughout the engagement process.
  • allocating resources responsibly to fulfill commitments made to Indigenous groups.
  • demonstrating the impact of community contributions by highlighting tangible changes resulting from their input.

Flexibility: Pledge to continuously learn and adapt engagement approaches to foster a culture of engagement, collaboration, and mutual learning. To demonstrate flexibility, practitioners can:

  • Set clear success criteria from the outset and adjust strategies as needed based on feedback.
  • Experiment with innovative engagement methods and tools tailored to Indigenous contexts.
  • Partner with Indigenous group members, Indigenous women leaders, Indigenous authorities, etc., to leverage their knowledge and enhance capacity-building efforts within engagement practices.

Webler et al. (1995) developed a cooperative discourse model which includes the following recommendations for creating more equitable participation in IA:

  • Provide detailed and accessible information about the expectations from participants from day one (e.g., provide plain language summaries that are translated to all the written languages used by the communities).
  • Offer participants the opportunity to co-design the IA process.
  • Complement discussions with site visits.
  • Give participants the chance to discuss what they’ve learned in small groups.
  • Meet in different local community hubs (e.g., libraries, popular cafes or restaurants, community centres).
  • If a panel format is used, ensure that each person has fair opportunities to speak.

Examples

Applying culturally relevant GBA Plus to engagement processes with Indigenous people involves going beyond standard engagement practices by tailoring them to the specific communities/regions impacted. This might involve engaging specifically with groups of people who face barriers to engagement, whose voices are often not heard, or who may be uncomfortable speaking up in certain situations. For instance, some women may not feel comfortable speaking in public in front of a panel of men so creating specific spaces for them to participate could help address this. 

Engagement informed by culturally relevant GBA Plus means doing engagement in ways that are appropriate for the place, people, and project at hand. This requires working with communities so that they can define what culturally relevant and appropriate engagement is for them. For instance, as part of the Harmonized Impact Assessment for twinning the TransCanada Highway in northern Ontario. The Harmonized Impact Assessment reflects the Anishinaabe expression of collaboration, integrating Indigenous perspectives and knowledge systems. It specifically outlines the project’s effects as understood through a process that operationalizes the Manito Aki Inakonigaawin (the Great Earth Law). This approach harmonizes Anishinaabe teachings with Western science, creating a unique framework that respects and incorporates Indigenous worldviews while addressing assessment requirements. As part of the Harmonized Impact Assessment, there were specific gatherings for Elders, youth, men, and women. Different types of events and activities were used, including community events, Elders’ gatherings, individual interviews, and ceremonies. In all of these, there was a focus on storytelling as a way of sharing information and learning from each other. The interviews were also done after community events or Elders’ gatherings to allow for more time to reflect on the issues. During interviews or focus groups, “memory-jogging resources” such as photos were used to help with remembering and storytelling (Harmonized Impact Assessment, 2021, p. 40). 

Generally, engagement informed by culturally relevant GBA Plus helps ensure the substantial and meaningful involvement of diverse perspectives and communities. This is particularly important in the scoping phase because it is where the parameters of the assessment are determined, including what valued components or key issues of importance will be included in the impact assessment. Thus, it represents an opportunity for influencing the shape of the assessment before it happens (rather than simply commenting after this is determined). The Nunavut Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, which assessed the potential of future offshore oil exploration in Nunavut, spent about a year determining the scope of the assessment. This involved two sets of engagements in ten communities in Nunavut. As a result of spending this time on the scoping process, public comments and communities’ emphasis on climate change led to it being added as a valued component in the assessment process. 

Finally, for engagement to be successful, it should not only include culturally appropriate methods, but also be advertised in ways that will work for the community and are widely accessible. For instance, in places where the internet is poor or there is an older adult population, social media might not be the best way to advertise events or opportunities. For the Harmonized Impact Assessment described earlier, bi-monthly newsletters to keep people up to date on events and progress were distributed in several different ways and formats. Newsletters were brought to specific locations where they could be picked up by residents, distributed door to door, and put up on notice boards in key locations in the community (Harmonized Impact Assessment, 2021, p. 39). They were also posted on Facebook. To advertise events, posters were shared on Facebook and put up in communities. These posters included key information needed to participate and draw people in, including information about prizes and honorariums. While advertising is important, getting people to come to events also requires considering barriers to participation and how to address them. For instance, in person and virtual engagement sessions should be accessible and inclusive for people living with disabilities by taking steps such as using accessible venues and providing closed captioning during meetings. In addition, offering meals, refreshments, and childcare are key to reducing barriers and supporting more widespread participation.

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