Relationship Building With Indigenous Peoples – A Beneficial Strategy For Project Proponents And Operators

With the start of a new year, many proponents and operators are taking stock of their project's status, its path forward and its future milestones.¹ An aspect of such evaluations that sometimes does not receive optimal focus is the relationship with any Indigenous people that may be affected by the project (Indigenous Peoples). Such relationships may provide a project with a number of benefits, including a competitive advantage.

While a project may benefit from any relationship building with Indigenous Peoples, this article focuses on developing and maintaining a particular type of relationship that we have seen repeatedly benefit large energy, infrastructure and mining projects. More specifically, these relationships generally have the following key attributes: