12 Years After the TRC, Where Are We On Economic Reconciliation?

From a young age, Jennifer Harper recognized make-up as a powerful means of self-expression. But growing up with Anishinaabe roots, she also saw the lack of representation for Indigenous people in the industry’s branding and advertising. 

Knowing how vital it is for young people to see themselves reflected in the products and media they consume, Harper decided to do something about it. In 2016, she founded Cheekbone Beauty: an Indigenous-owned and founded ecommerce cosmetics company. 

Today, Cheekbone Beauty is an innovator in the beauty space, committed to going zero-waste by 2023. In June 2020, the National Research Council approved a grant to help the company develop a new foundation product using plant waste. Harper and her team have also been in search of sustainable packaging options, using agricultural by-products. 

Harper has been asked many times to define ‘economic reconciliation.’ “I think my answer changes every time because I’m growing as an entrepreneur,” she says, but she points specifically to actions individuals, particularly non-Indigenous people, can take through their purchasing power. “We make a lot of decisions every single day, maybe without even realizing it when we’re at checkout. If we stop and ask ourselves, ‘Who am I supporting by this purchase?’ — those questions really do matter if we really want to see any kind of change.”

There are plenty of opportunities to buy from and support Indigenous entrepreneurs, to take part in this individual economic reconciliation. In Canada, Indigenous entrepreneurship has been on the rise for several years, and in the early 2000s, grew up to five times faster than that of non-Indigenous Canadians. In 2016, it was reported that, from the $32 billion Indigenous people contributed to Canada’s economy, over $12 billion was from Indigenous businesses.

In 2016, it was reported that, from the $32 billion Indigenous people contributed to Canada’s economy, over $12 billion was from Indigenous businesses.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has a section dedicated to business and reconciliation, ensuring Indigenous people have ‘equitable access to jobs, training, and education opportunities in the corporate sector.’ This Indigenous History Month marks 12 years since the TRC’s establishment. Over a decade later, despite Indigenous business being on the rise, Indigenous founders continue to face significant barriers when launching their start-ups, including access to equity and capital for their start-ups. 

That reduced access to equity and capital means that Indigenous entrepreneurs and innovators are more likely to rely on personal savings for their start-ups — presenting a major inequality, as Indigenous people face the highest levels of poverty. And COVID-19 has brought into sharp focus other systemic injustices faced by Indigenous communities, too, from barriers to healthcare to inadequate access to housing. 

For Jeff Cyr, the Managing Partner of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners (RICP), COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity to invest in Indigenous innovation, empowering local entrepreneurs to solve problems, presented by the pandemic and otherwise, at the community level. 

Cyr is the Chair of the Indigenous Innovation Council, whose recently-launched program, The Indigenous Innovation Initiative, aims to build resiliency through empowering Indigenous entrepreneurs. Cyr says this is the first time a program of its kind — aimed at building capacity for innovation among Indigenous people — has started in Canada. “People in communities who are facing problems are generally the ones best suited to finding innovative ideas to solve them. It’s better not to drive down into a community, for lack of a better word, from an ivory tower. From an office tower. In a COVID-19 world, that’s even more critical, because the real data rests in the hands of the community, about what they’re facing.”

Like Harper, Cyr points out that there’s no broadly-accepted definition of economic reconciliation. “We can imagine that it means much more equity in access to finance and resources,” he says. “It’s a way of supporting Indigenous enterprises and communities to participate in the economy in the way that they want to. To me, it means meeting Indigenous people where they are at, with the communities that they want to build.”

RICP’s relationship with Cheekbone Beauty is a prime example. After appearing on Dragon’s Den in 2019, Harper received an offer of $125,000 — in exchange for 50 percent ownership of her business, but Harper turned the offer down in favour of RICP. “Their investing really fits with our mission and vision,” she says. “They invest based on an Indigenous value system, which takes so many things into account, aside from just the business plan and the founder. They really look deeply at the Indigenous entrepreneur, what they’re trying to accomplish, with more of a socially-driven purpose.”

What is it that makes RICP invest in that future? For Cyr, it was through innovation that Indigenous communities survived centuries of oppression. “I think that Indigenous people are pivoting from a point of surviving to a point of thriving, generally. There’ve been 200 years and more of colonialism actively trying to suppress cultures and peoples. We’re starting to get over that hump, where now Indigenous peoples are thriving in certain aspects of society — not all, but in certain aspects. 

To Harper, one reason for Indigenous innovation is that “Historically, our communities have always been really community-driven — the whole concept of keeping things in a circle versus doing things on our own. Indigenous people have realized the power of doing things together. Globally, I think we’re well over 7,000 tribes, languages and tongues. We’re not the same. Each community has their different teachings, belief systems, principles and values that they live by. But we are very similar because we have a shared past experience. Community still thrives very strongly, even through the systems of generational trauma and the systematic abuse that many of our people have suffered for a really long time. Even through all of that, [there are] heart-centered communities still proving to be really, really strong and effective. I love taking that concept into this business. I may have started [Cheekbone Beauty], but it’s only grown because of our community,” she says. 

We’re always in search of new streams of giving versus new streams of making revenue,” Harper says. “Anyone who wants to invest in us might not like to hear that, but we don’t really care.”

To date, Cheekbone Beauty has donated over $14,000 in cash and over $20,000 in products to charitable causes. Every year, the company donates 10 percent of all profits to the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society, ensuring the safety and well-being of Indigenous children through ‘education initiatives, public policy campaigns and providing quality resources to support communities’.

We’re always in search of new streams of giving versus new streams of making revenue,” Harper says. “Anyone who wants to invest in us might not like to hear that, but we don’t really care.”

As a social enterprise, this can sometimes create challenges. Traditional investors “want things to be quantifiable. How are we going to show in a chart that we’re doing something?” Harper says. “I always have said that first, we’re going to make [potential customers] feel something as a brand. Then, we’re going to take the next steps to show them a path to doing things better.” For Cheekbone Beauty, doing things better means empowering Indigenous youth, and ensuring their products leave as little impact on the environment as possible.

To Cyr, there’s a lot that society can gain from this type of business, and the experience of Indigenous communities, especially during this time of recovery for the country. When funding Indigenous innovators, he says, “a lot of the time it means that [a solution to a problem] isn’t something bright, new and shiny. Maybe there’s an older way of doing business, that has a different set of values that can be brought back into ‘mainstream society.’” 

Supporting this kind of innovation from the ground up is key to building resilient economies, Cyr says. “Innovation funding allows a different way to seed good ideas at the community level, problem-solving in ways that meet people’s needs,” he says. “That’s how you’re building a reconciliation economy. You’re supporting that capacity to generate on its own and the way that makes sense [to that community]. Hopefully we all learn from that and are better from it. I’m pretty sure we will be, at the end of the day.”

Investors and philanthropic organizations play a vital role in creating economic reconciliation, especially during this recovery period. Cyr’s advice to them? “Put Indigenous people in charge of both the platform, and the funding decisions. Indigenize the whole thing, make [it] reflective of Indigenous realities. Give up control, change the power dynamic, put the money in the hands of the Indigenous people to properly support their own people — our own people.”

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