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A senior Indigenous banker in Canada cautions the Canadian government to keep Indigenous consultation at the forefront for major projects.
As Dan Karpenchuk reports, he also says there is interest from Indigenous leaders in taking part in those major energy projects.
Recently Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney repeated his plan to fast track major energy projects in Canada.
Last week, he said Ottawa would build quickly and “in the right way” in consulting with Indigenous and provincial partners, but some of those leaders have been critical fearing that the process of consultation will be rushed and their concerns would be brushed aside.
Carney’s government wants to change parts of environmental law to make it easier to build a pipeline to the west coast, along with other energy projects.
Bill Lomax is the president and CEO of the First Nations Bank of Canada.
He says that early and meaningful talks with Indigenous communities is key.
“We’re seeing more business acquisitions happening, joint ventures happening with companies that are servicing, let’s say, a pipeline. That kind of thing is just really taken off. We’ve seen our business grow. We’re really a reflection of our clients. And their success leads to our success.”
Lomax says the bank’s commercial business was growing by 10% a year, but in the past year, it’s been 26%.
He says that shows how much Indigenous businesses are becoming involved, but he warns the opportunity for their approval is there if the consultation is done right.
“You need to engage with the nation early on and let them know what you are thinking about, have them participate and have them be part of the plan.”
Lomax says even though some Indigenous communities will be against some projects, but he believes there are many more that would be ready to move and move quickly.
The First Nations Bank of Canada is an Indigenous-owned national bank. It’s mission is to serve Indigenous people, nations, and businesses.
The Alaska Native Language Center will publish a novel this summer retelling Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Seal”, the only Jungle Book story set outside India, on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea.
Two artists from the Pribilof Islands retell the story through the perspective of a young Indigenous protagonist named Sergie.
KUCB’s Maggie Nelson has more.
Garrett Pletnikoff is the coauthor of the new young adult chapter book “Sergie and the White Seal”.
The story is an adaptation of one in Kipling’s Jungle Book, “The White Seal”, published in 1894. And actually names Pletnikoff’s great, great, great grandfather as a main antagonist.
Kipling portrays Pletnikoff’s ancestors through a disparaging colonial lens — as unclean murderers of the innocent marine mammals.
Pletnikoff says this adaptation is a chance to tell a different story — to portray the Unangan community and the seals as partners instead of enemies, as Kipling wrote them.
“The White Seal includes violent descriptions of seal harvesting, but Kipling never mentions that these harvests were not done by Unangan free will. The Unangan people of the Pribilof Islands were subjected to forced labor.”
Hannah Zimmerman coauthored the book with Pletnikoff.
She says they were inspired by Unangan lore and mythology and decided to name their main character after a spiritual leader from the Aleutian chain — Sergie Soboroff.
“It’s a story of Sergie, who discovers that he’s a shaman, and he has this, you know, magical ability to talk to animals, and he discovers his purpose as a conduit between the animal world, in the human world.”
Zimmerman says they used Sergie’s role as a shaman to discuss topics like how colonization wiped out certain Indigenous practices.
“When we read the book to fourth and fifth graders in the fall at the St Paul Island School. And I’ll never forget how, at the end of the book, one of the fifth grade students came up to me, and he was like, you know, I didn’t know Aleuts could be superheroes.”
“Sergie and the White Seal” is now available through the University Press of Colorado’s website.
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