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Indigenous-owned businesses are 40 times more likely to be involved in the mining and oil and gas sectors than the average Canadian business. The extractive sector hires twice as many Indigenous employees and pays on average twice as much in wages as other sectors. Natural resource development is where we’ve been able to make the most progress as employees, contractors, partners and owners. It provides much-needed jobs and revenues to our communities.

I previously worked for the Aboriginal Equity Partners, a group of 31 First Nations and Métis communities who had an ownership stake in the Northern Gateway pipeline. It would have produced $2 billion in economic benefits including jobs, business opportunities, and training for our communities, until it was killed by the federal government. When we went to Ottawa to testify in opposition to Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium, Transport Minister Marc Garneau called us “private interests” who were “not in the same category” as the First Nations in support of the government’s bill.

This is an unfortunate but common sentiment. Every day Indigenous leaders are called on by their people to address poverty in their communities through better housing, water, education and employment. But when they go and engage with industry to actually develop economic opportunities, they are often called sell-outs. This is made worse by the fact that those who are the loudest in opposition to working with oil and gas and mining are often elites in cities and institutions who don’t have to face the consequences of on-reserve poverty every day.