At a May meeting for TMX Group, Canada’s largest stock exchange operator, shareholders made history by voting overwhelmingly in favour of a proposal to reshape how the financial services company works with the Indigenous economy. 

The proposal calls on TMX Group’s board of directors to develop internal programs on equity that include Indigenous communities in the company’s business practices, but also review how TMX Group procures from Indigenous-owned businesses. It’s believed to be the first time a Canadian company’s board of directors has jointly endorsed a proposal on reconciliation—and a unique project called the Reconciliation and Responsible Investing Initiative (RRII) helped make it possible.

Katie Wheatley, manager of the RRII at the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE), says companies can’t just ignore Indigenous rights over the course of business anymore, especially given the ways Canadian courts are recognizing Indigenous title and rights. “It’s in everyone’s benefit for investors to be asking their investee companies to build strong policies around Indigenous relations and Indigenous rights,” she says. 

The RRII became a full-time project in 2018 after years of discussions between SHARE and the National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association (NATOA) about embedding reconciliation into Canada’s investment realm. Many Indigenous communities who’d successfully concluded land claim negotiations with the Canadian government were holding financial assets within trusts, Wheatley says, but their leadership didn’t have a lot of places to go to learn about the basics of managing one, from hiring asset managers to explaining the role of a trustee to community members. 

NATOA helped Indigenous communities navigate the world of trusts — but wanted to get more Indigenous involvement in responsible investment. It eventually connected with SHARE, and RRII grew out of their conversations. RRII doesn’t just help Indigenous communities manage their assets within a settler investment framework. Wheatley says RRII also shows Indigenous leaders how to incorporate their own cultural values into their investment policies. 

Consider the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin Trust Fund’s investment policy. In it, explicitly laid out, is a requirement for the fund’s trustees to invest in a way that “does not enable harm to the environment or the spiritual and cultural values of Native Americans.” Wheatley says RRII shows Indigenous investors how they can incorporate their own cultural values into their own investment policies — and how settler investors can participate in reconciliation, too. 

Reconciliation through investment

The third-last call to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report deals with economic development, business, and investment. “We call upon the corporate sector in Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework and to apply its principles, norms, and standards to corporate policy and core operational activities involving Indigenous peoples and their lands and resources,” reads the TRC’s 92nd call to action. 

This includes not only obtaining “free, prior, and informed consent” from Indigenous communities before proceeding with economic development projects in their territory (which could include anything from hydroelectric dams to oil pipelines), but also ensuring Indigenous peoples have equitable access to jobs. Perhaps most crucially for investors, the report calls for Indigenous communities to “gain long-term sustainable benefits from economic development projects.” 

RRII offers practical guides on how Indigenous and non-Indigenous investors alike can advance reconciliation within their business. Its first step for non-Indigenous investors is literally just that — teaching staff and boards of directors about Indigenous history and the legacy of residential schools. “Advancing awareness can start by putting up a sign in your front office that acknowledges the traditional Indigenous territory where your office resides,” the 2019 report for non-Indigenous investors said. 

Meanwhile, RRII’s 2020 report for Indigenous investors proposes an incorporation of traditional culture into their investment policies. These documents act as roadmaps for investors, telling them what they should and should not put their money into — and they can also act as a bridge between an Indigenous community’s traditional values and the potential prosperity offered by modern investments. 

The Selkirk First Nation Trust’s policy, for example, says its primary objective is to “promote a healthy, united and self-reliant people of the First Nation, while conserving and enhancing our environment and culture.” Statements like these may not seem relevant to financial investment, RRII’s report says, but they can guide an asset manager working on behalf of an Indigenous community in the course of an investment. 

“The statement should outline the purpose of the trust and the community’s aims, beliefs, and values regarding its financial assets and its approach to investing,” the 2020 report from RRII recommends to Indigenous investors. “In the absence of this direction from the community, asset managers’ experiences and values will be the default in investment decision making.” 

Encouraging allyship

RRII recently developed a framework to show how asset owners should expect their asset managers to advance reconciliation — and where they’re still falling short. In a 2021 report titled “All Hands on Deck”, the initiative found 40 of the 48 Canadian investment managers and advisors it surveyed said they’d incorporated considerations around reconciliation and Indigenous rights recognition into their investment analysis. However, these firms don’t appear to be doing much to actually follow up on whether these values are actually playing out in their investments over time. 

“The vast majority of managers have said they do, to a degree, build Indigenous considerations into how they select and evaluate investment opportunities,” Wheatley says, “but that there isn’t much stewardship work going on once those investments are placed.” 

Outside of issuing reports, Wheatley says RRII also holds an annual investor summit that brings together a broad network of asset owners from trusts, pension funds, and other investment groups to brainstorm how to move asset managers further along the path of reconciliation. Last year, RRII invited the University of Victoria to talk about the process it took to incorporate support for the Indigenous economy into its investment policy — one that resulted in a $500,000 investment into a fund created by Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, a leading Indigeous led social finance intermediary, in December 2020. 

“There are quite tangible steps that investors can take on reconciliation,” Wheatley says. “This doesn’t have to be an insurmountable goal.” 

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