"New awakening" in Indigenous engagement: Cameco's director of corporate responsibility shared their community-focused strategy, saying discussions of Aboriginal inclusion are "moving from the back burner up to the front".

AuthorMyers, Ella
PositionMINING

Sean Willy brings a unique perspective to his role as director of corporate responsibility for the uranium producing Canadian Mining and Energy Corporation (Cameco).

Willy was raised in the Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan, and belongs to the Metis Nation of NWT.

He runs the Saskatchewan-based Cameco's Aboriginal engagement program, bringing personal and professional insight to his role, which he presented at a Goodman School of Mines lecture.

The school's Nicole Tardif said Willy was brought to Sudbury to share Cameco's years of experience building strong, mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous populations in northern Saskatchewan with local academia and industry.

"There's a new awakening to how mining companies deal with Indigenous groups and people are coming to realize the right way to communicate and benefit the company and Indigenous community," said Tardif.

"Cameco is one of the leading companies for corporate responsibility, and the only way we're going to get better as a mining industry is to hear from people who do well and succeed at it."

Cameco works with numerous First Nations communities in northern Saskatchewan, and has developed these relationships over the past 25 years.

They signed one of Canada's first impact management agreements in 1999 with seven Athabasca basin communities.

Currently, Cameco has collaboration agreements with the Metis community of Pinehouse and the English River First Nations, a business development agreement with the community of Southend, and Willy said they're working on a new agreement with the Dene communities of the Athabasca Basin.

Willy said Cameco tries to avoid simply arranging cash payments, and moved towards less "paternalistic" partnerships with the communities in which they work.

"Straight money helps, but it doesn't create that grassroots capacity that's needed to create fundamental change within Canada," said Willy.

"We've moved to a production, revenue-share model. We look at it as an investment in a partnership, not a cost of doing business."

Cameco, he said, has a higher community support rate of around 79 per cent for projects due to this approach, gets project licenses earlier and has a higher local workforce retention.

Cameco is Canada's top industrial employer of Aboriginal people. Willy said the economic potential of the growing Aboriginal population in Canada cannot be ignored, and they've developed strategies to take this...

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