Sustainability

"To bring together industry leaders and Aboriginal organizations to share best practices in partnership building and promote further engagement from both communities, the Public Policy Forum organized a national workshop at The Westin in Ottawa on June 4, 2009, with a private reception the evening before.

"Commissioned by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), this web-based publication was designed by the Institute to systematically capture the knowledge and insights of economic development experts, many of whom were about to retire from the public service.

"There are few works on economic development among Canada's Aboriginal. Living Rhythms offers a current perspective on indigenous economics, planning, business development, sustainable development, and knowledge systems. Using a series of cases studies featuring Aboriginal communities and organizations, Wanda Wuttunee shows that their adaptations to economic and social development are based on indigenous wisdom and experience.

"Research in indigenous entrepreneurship as well as women and entrepreneurship is growing. This paper presents 11 case studies on women Aboriginal entrepreneurs in Quebec, Canada. For Aboriginal peoples, small business and entrepreneurship is intimately linked to community and cultural survival. Within these communities, women assume major roles and are active participants and leaders in politics and in business. This research examines several models of entrepreneurship – traits, behavioural and environmental.

"The objective of the Think Tank on Wealth Creation was to examine how wealth is created and how the journey of economic prosperity could be reached in a free market economy on reserve. What conditions and barriers exist that prevent the creation of wealth and prosperity? Inversely, what conditions must exist to build a meaningful and sustainable economy, especially absent from the creation and reliance on characteristics of dependency.

"This report provides evidence that Aboriginal women and other marginalized women can be supported more fully to participate, lead and grow self-employment initiatives and entrepreneurial enterprises in Canada."

"This study assessed tourists' motivations and satisfaction in participating in authentic Mi'kmaw tourism activities in Nova Scotia, Canada, as well as the ideas, perceptions and components of sustainable cultural tourism development from the Mi'kmaw perspective. To solicit the tourists' perspective, surveys were administered to tourists visiting the existing Mi'kmaw cultural tourism sites in Nova Scotia, while the Mi'kmaw perspective was obtained through key informant interviews.

"The intellectual focus is on the complex relationships that develop between Indigenous peoples, civil society and the environment in the context of market- and state-mandated development. The volume shows how the boundaries between Indigenous peoples’ organizations, civil society, the state, markets, development and the environment are ambiguous and constantly changing. It is this fact that lies at the heart of the political possibility of local agency, but also, ironically, of the possibility of undermining it.

"The following case study presents sustainable community economic development (SCED) as one path for achieving sustainable development within the setting of a fishing-dependent First Nations community along Canada's Pacific coastline. The study is based on the author's Masters research at Simon Fraser University as well as subsequent related research and development projects (1999-2001). The purpose of the initial study was to examine if and how a fishing-dependent community (Alert Bay, British Columbia) can utilize fisheries co-management as one component of an overall SCED strategy.

"An Aboriginal workers' co-operative in Winnipeg, Neechi Foods, has developed a series of community economic development (CED) principles that seem to offer a much more comprehensive view of "sustainability." A view that could readily encompass the resource focused definition, but which clearly goes beyond it. This approach to sustainability was developed specifically to address urban economic development, but it could easily be adapted for remote and rural economies too. These principles have been refined over time, through discussion and debate, and now number eleven in total.