Equity and reconciliation - first steps and a long way to go: How Canadian cities are integrating indigenous perspectives into environmental policymaking


Julie Hagan, Université Laval

Cities are important institutional players in the governance of social and environmental questions such as sustainability, climate change and indigenous-settler relations. Many major Canadian cities have long been involved in environmental issues, with their commitment to sustainable development after the Rio Summit. Since 2010 cities have also been called upon to intervene on climate change both by national and international bodies (OCDE, 2010). While many cities have been engaging with indigenous matters for some time, they have often done so from the angle of proposing solutions to poverty and social difficulties. Although well founded, these interventions were not always co-constructed, and may have contributed to the reproduction of colonial dynamics. Moreover, by offering an oversimplified image of indigenous peoples, they may have furthered stereotypes and marginalization (Peters, 2012). It is only more recently that cities have truly addressed the question of decolonization and reconciliation, largely in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action (TRC, 2015). The intersection of these two areas of municipal action - environmental governance and reconciliation - raises the questions: to what extent are Canadian cities integrating indigenous perspectives in environmental policymaking? And where does Indigenous Peoples participation fit into the development and implementation of these policies? Some conceptions of environmental and climate justice go beyond the ever-relevant concerns of risk distribution, and introduces other dimensions: equity, participatory justice and justice as recognition (Schlosberg, 2004; Bulkeley, 2014).Along with many equity-seeking groups, Indigenous Peoples face inequalities in exposure to environmental risks and barriers to participation in decision-making. as their link to the land is marked by colonization and a culturally distinct relationship with nature. It is in this context that we wanted to examine the efforts made by Canadian cities to integrate indigenous viewpoints into environmental policymaking. To this end, we analyzed policy documents produced by six major Canadian cities: Calgary, Montral, Ottawa, Qubec City, Toronto and Vancouver. For each city, we compared documents published before and after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action, supplemented by interviews with decision-makers. Before 2015, the cities studied had made little effort to take indigenous worldviews into account in their environmental decision-making processes-with the exception of Calgary engaging with the Blackfoot Confederacy in the redevelopment of Nose Hill Park. Since then, many cities have adopted reconciliation strategies, but find themselves at different points in their journey toward reconciliation. Some cities, such as Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, have developed sophisticated multidimensional approaches tackling the distribution of risks, highlighting the importance of participation to decision-making and recognizing the contribution of indigenous knowledge. Montral adopted a reconciliation strategy recommending the inclusion of indigenous perspectives into its climate change strategies, but it has not (yet) been integrated into policy documents. Ottawa's reconciliation strategy does not address environmental issues, and we couldn't find any documents on reconciliation for Qubec City, although there are occasional initiatives to showcase indigenous culture. Efforts to promote equity and inclusion by Canada's leading cities, suggest that some municipal governments are beginning to address the recognition dimension of environmental justice, contrasting with the prevailing approaches to urban environmental policymaking (Bulkeley, 2013, 2014). References to experiential knowledge and traditional knowledge, in the policy documents of some cities (e.g. Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver) also question post-political conceptions of environmental governance dominated by expert knowledge and techno-managerial solutions (Swyngedouw, 2011). We have focused on analyzing the content of policy documents and identifying the social actors involved in their elaboration. Although the results are noteworthy in terms of environmental justice theory, the question of their actual impact stays open. Some evidence shows that effective consultation between municipalities and Indigenous Peoples around climate change remains imperfect and riddled with challenges (Gillis, 2023). More in-depth qualitative research by and with Indigenous Peoples is needed. Despite these limitations, our article aims to further the engagement of environmental justice theory with decolonial thought. A lack of engagement highlighted by many (lvarez and Coolsaet, 2020; Roy and Hanaček, 2023), which appears as a particularly problematic blind spot for environmental justice theory in contexts marked by a history of colonialism, such as Canada.

This paper will be presented at the following session: