Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Squamish Nation councillor Khelsilem maintain a ceremonial paddle after a groundbreaking ceremony on the First Nation's Sen̓áḵw housing improvement web site in Vancouver in September 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
First Nations have been resisting the historic and ongoing impacts of Canada’s extractive economic system on their communities by exercising their proper to self-governance and taking management of their financial futures.
Inventive disruption stands in distinction to inventive destruction, a time period coined by Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter argued that capitalism causes previous concepts and expertise to shortly turn into out of date by the method of innovation. Within the pursuit of revenue, capitalism ruthlessly and relentlessly eliminates previous concepts and installs new ones.
Inventive disruption, however, goals to create space for brand spanking new concepts by forcing the previous methods to adapt and undertake. First Nations communities are doing this in a lot of methods.
As an educational with a background in city land economics, I’ve studied how First Nations are utilizing inventive disruption to form companies, city communities and the health-care system in Canada.
Sen̓áḵw improvement venture
One of many ironies of contemporary Indigenous land legislation is how the reserve system outlined by the Indian Act, initially designed to assimilate Indigenous nations and communities into mainstream Canadian tradition, has morphed right into a strategic asset for First Nations.
As writer Bob Joseph notes in 21 Issues You Might Not Know In regards to the Indian Act, the Squamish Nation misplaced 14 acres (about 0.05 sq. kilometres) of their territory in Vancouver to a lumber firm by expropriation in 1904.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks throughout an announcement and groundbreaking ceremony on the Squamish Nation’s Sen̓áḵw housing improvement web site in Vancouver in September 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
After a century of litigation, the Squamish Nation recovered among the misplaced land and is now within the strategy of constructing Sen̓áḵw, an enormous financial improvement venture in Kits Level, Vancouver.
Sen̓áḵw is the most important Indigenous-led housing retail improvement in Canadian historical past and can add much-needed housing provide to a market that has turn into unaffordable for many. The event plans to construct 11 towers and 6,000 housing models.
Naawi-Oodena city reserve
A second instance of inventive disruption is the creation of the Naawi-Oodena city reserve in Winnipeg. It’s the most important city reserve in Canada, overlaying 64 hectares.
Naawi-Oodena was formally established after the land the reserve sits on — the previous Kapyong Barracks — was just lately repatriated to the seven Treaty One First Nations.
Learn extra:
City reserves are assessments of reconciliation
Treaty One Nation fought to have the land returned to them underneath the provisions of the Treaty Land Entitlement Framework Settlement after the Canadian authorities tried to switch the land to a Crown company years in the past.
After a protracted authorized course of, a choose dominated the federal authorities didn’t adequately seek the advice of with Treaty One Nation and the land switch was dominated illegitimate in 2015.
An integrated consortium run by the Treaty One Nation, referred to as the Treaty One Improvement Company, will oversee developments on Naawi-Oodena.
As a self-governing nation, Treaty One will set its personal land administration insurance policies, probably in distinction to the zoning and constructing codes of Winnipeg. In actuality, it’s prone to gently push or disrupt city improvement, fairly than outright destroy present practices since its aim is to draw tenants, nearly all of which can be non-Indigenous.
First Nations well being care
First Nations entrepreneurs are additionally in search of out methods to revolutionize the Canadian health-care system. Enoch Cree Nation in Alberta entered into an settlement with contractors to create a personal well being clinic providing easy hip and knee surgical procedures.
The provincial authorities will fund the procedures by medicare and publicly funded hospitals will nonetheless deal with extra sophisticated surgical procedures.
Enoch Cree Nation joins a rising variety of personal well being clinics in Canada forming public-private partnerships. They don’t seem to be the primary First Nation to get entangled with well being care, both.
In 2012, Westbank First Nation introduced a plan to construct a personal, for-profit hospital. Some constitutional consultants warned that Westbank First Nation was violating the Canada Well being Act, however the nation responded by arguing that, as a self-governing nation, it was not sure by federal legal guidelines.
Enoch Cree Nation’s personal clinic will face different challenges. Whereas COVID-19 has shaken the religion Canadians have in our health-care system, and receptivity to non-public well being care could also be rising, the affinity for public well being care stays robust.
Authorized redress
First Nations have additionally turn into inventive disrupters by pursuing authorized redress for previous injustices. The courts have reached again by treaties all the way in which again to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to widen Canada’s structure past the formal acts to incorporate treaties with First Nations.
Institutional modifications supporting disruption embrace Article 35 of the 1982 Structure Act that acknowledges the “present aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada.” This clause is extensively interpreted as making a nation-to-nation relationship between First Nations and Canada.
Equally vital for industrial ventures is Article 87 of the Indian Act which exempts First Nations land from taxation by any order of presidency. This implies an city reserve doesn’t pay property tax to a municipality.
Regardless of criticism of the Indian Act by authors like Joseph, Article 87 affords a significant fiscal profit for First Nations people and companies on reserve. Though a fancy space of legislation, this tax exemption is a vital motive why First Nations could choose so as to add land to present reserves or to create new reserves, fairly than proudly owning land conventionally like companies.
Furthering reconciliation
Regardless of some First Nations regaining rights and titles to their lands, Indigenous communities in Canada nonetheless face many limitations to financial participation. By partaking within the examples of inventive disruption right here, First Nations are working towards financial prosperity for his or her communities and, within the course of, are additionally working towards reconciliation.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — the framework for reconciliation based on the Fact and Reconciliation Fee of Canada — states Indigenous folks have the best to pursue their very own technique of financial improvement. By beginning their very own entrepreneurial and developmental initiatives, First Nations are partaking of their inherent “proper to take care of and develop their political, financial and social techniques or establishments.”
Reconciliation additionally works finest when all events concerned profit from modifications. These examples of inventive disruption will profit non-Indigenous Canadians in addition to Indigenous folks by growing the housing provide in Vancouver and Winnipeg, bringing distant First Nations into the financial orbit of cities and providing elevated well being remedy choices.
Gregory C Mason receives funding from The College of Manitoba and the Thorlakson Household Basis Fund (Well being associated analysis).
