NWT Indigenous groups signed a $375M deal. What does it mean?

More than 20 NWT Indigenous governments are signing one of the most consequential deals in many years, one expected to unlock $375 million in federal and private investment to protect the land.

A ceremony is taking place in Behchokǫ̀ on Thursday to finalize the agreement, which is also known as the NWT PFP. Project Finance for Permanence is the name of the funding model used, which combines public and private cash.

The document – the Northwest Territories Our Land for the Future Agreement – establishes a huge sum of money for conservation in the NWT, for at least a decade and possibly well beyond.

$300 million is expected to come from the federal government. The rest will come from private donors such as the Metcalf Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and Waltons Trust. (While $375 million is the headline figure, the agreement leaves some wriggle room and that may not be the final sum.)

Federal Crown-Indigenous relations minister Gary Anandasangaree called the agreement “of the largest Indigenous-led land conservation initiatives in the world.”

The deal has been in the works for years. Rarely have so many Indigenous nations in the North worked with each other and the federal and territorial governments in this fashion.

People behind the agreement believe it changes the territory’s economy, putting a massive amount of funding behind land protection and turning that work into an economic driver in its own right.

“I know these investments will change the future of the NWT in a really hopeful and inspiring way,” said Dahti Tsetso of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, which facilitated discussions that led to the deal.

“I think it introduces an exciting way to approach economic development in the North that didn’t exist before.

“For me, what this initiative really represents is the start of some really important work and, frankly, just hope for the future.”

President Marc Whitford of the North Slave Métis Alliance called the signing of the deal “a new day.”

“There’s a horizon that doesn’t look so black and gloomy any more,” he told Cabin Radio.

The text of the agreement, which is more than 30 pages long, asserts that the funding could help turn almost 20 percent of the NWT into newly protected areas over the next decade. That’s an area of 23 million hectares – more than five times, to use a grim but meaningful comparison, the area burned by the territory’s record wildfire season in 2023.

But how will it do that? How is the money unlocked, who decides how it is handed out, and what does and doesn’t qualify for a share of the funding?

Here’s a guide to some of the basics.

What does this actually mean?

The $375 million goes into a big pot (actually two pots – we’ll come back to that) and will ultimately be used to fund lots of different things the Indigenous governments want to do.

Those projects need to be related to conservation in some shape or form.

Examples of programs that will qualify for funding include:

• new and existing protected and conserved areas;
• guardian programs;
• climate monitoring;
• economic development projects that are “compatible with conservation and stewardship;”
• on-the-land cultural and language programs;
• some forms of emergency planning;
• some forms of tourism; and
• investments in the harvesting economy.

The draft agreement included an example document that set out how an average year’s funding might look.

In that example – which may not bear any resemblance to what eventually happens, but is a useful place to start – an average year might see $15 million spent on managing established protected areas, $15 million spent on guardian programs, $5 million on establishing new protected areas, $1 million on “core capacity support” for Indigenous governments, and $1 million managing the fund, among other expenses.

Tsetso, from the Indigenous Leadership Initiative that helped governments to craft the deal, described how she sees the practical consequences of the funding.

“I get emotional when I think about it because it means guardians on the ground. It means little boys and girls looking up to people in our communities playing these roles, maybe wanting to be them one day. It means they’re inspired to graduate from high school so they can serve their communities in this way,” she told Cabin Radio.

“It means our knowledge systems are uplifted and honoured in the conversation. It means we have meaningful resources to engage in decision-making and have better footing when we’re talking with partners from within research or universities, but also with industry.”

More: $375-million agreement was a deal done differently

Whitford, of the North Slave Métis Alliance, said: “We’re finally getting the help we need to be better stewards of the environment and expand our capacity to be better guardians of our land.

“We can’t depend on government all the time or the mines – the mines are going out. Having this new form of funding is a very, very welcome addition to our operations and our people.”

We’ll come back to mines in a moment, too.

Who signed up and who didn’t?

Firstly, let’s be clear: the NWT government doesn’t get any money. (Nor did it contribute any.) It did have a legislative role creating the trust that will hold the money.

The GNWT isn’t complaining. Environment minister Jay Macdonald said the agreement is “a tremendous opportunity for the Northwest Territories.”

“Look at it from the economic benefits that it’s going to provide to many of the small communities that don’t regularly see these types of opportunities,” Macdonald said.

“For the world to look at all of us, what we did collaboratively together – we’ve set a tremendously high bar toward reconciliation, what can actually be accomplished if you’re prepared to all come to the table.”

So who came to that table?

Indigenous partners in the deal – who can each expect some financial benefit – are:

• Acho Dene Koe First Nation
• Dehcho First Nations
• Délın̨ę Got’ın̨ę Government
• Deninu Kųę́ First Nation
• Fort Good Hope Dene and Métis
• Fort Resolution Métis Council
• Gwich’in Tribal Council
• Kátł’odeeche First Nation
• Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation
• Łútsël K’é Dene First Nation
• Nahɂą Dehé Dene Band
• North Slave Métis Alliance
• Northwest Territory Métis Nation
• Pehdzeh Ki First Nation
• Sambaa K’e First Nation
• Smith’s Landing First Nation
• Tłı̨chǫ Government
• Tthets’éhk’edélî First Nation
• Tulita Dene and Métis
• West Point First Nation
• Yellowknives Dene First Nation

There are some notable absentees on that list. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, for example, is not a listed signatory, and nor is the Salt River First Nation. (The agreement says others can be added at a later date “by consensus” of existing members.)

How will the money be shared out?

There are at least two ways of looking at this.

Firstly, the $375 million is going to be split into two pots.

In pot one will go $285 million, and that money will be spent over the next 10 years until the pot is empty. If your Indigenous government gets money from this agreement in the next decade, it will almost certainly come from this pot.

Into pot two goes the remaining $90 million, “to sustain ongoing activities and operations beyond that period.”

In practice, what that means is the $90 million will be put into an endowment fund. The way an endowment fund works is that only the interest the fund earns can be spent – not the original $90 million itself, which sits there generating interest the whole time.

According to an example financial plan included with the draft agreement, the hope is that the endowment fund is worth $120 million after the first decade is up and the $285 million has been spent.

At that point, the partner governments can either decide to do something with the $120 million in pot two, go out and get a new deal done to refill pot one, or both.

“We’re going to see incredible impact from those spend-down dollars” said Tsetso of pot one, “but in 10 years’ time, we want to be in a positive place. What’s really important under the agreement is the commitment to tracking the impact of these dollars.”

Tsetso says similar agreements elsewhere have demonstrated returns of four dollars for every dollar invested, occasionally stretching all the way up to $20 for every $1 invested.

“It’s going to be important to track those impacts over time so there’s clear evidence on why there could be future investments into such a fund,” she said.

The second way to look at this is: what’s the process going to be like for dividing up the money in pot one? Who decides who gets what?

The short answer is we don’t know yet.

A board of directors will be appointed to oversee the fund, including five people nominated by Indigenous governments and two people nominated by the donors who have put in the money.

Their task will be to establish a means of giving out the cash.

In the meantime, Indigenous leaders are already thinking about how their eventual share of the funding will be used.

“We have guardianship programs that we’re building up very rapidly but it’s all about money. How much money do you have to move this goal post over?” said Whitford at the North Slave Métis Alliance.

“We have things like the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road. It’s very important because of how it affects caribou populations, which are elemental to our people. This funding will help us better monitor and better participate in decision-making.

“Harvester sampling, land use planning, wildlife co-management, archiving – there are so many different areas we need to plug in. We’re all in unison and stepping forward along that same road to protect the environment.”

Ɂek’wahtı̨dǝ́ Danny Gaudet, leader of the Délın̨ę Got’ın̨ę Government, said the funding would deliver much-needed momentum to local projects.

“We decided to work toward developing a conservation area, getting us more involved in monitoring the land and its resources,” he said.

“We’ve worked very hard at trying to get this in place [and] we realized we needed some type of funds, some type of support from governments and, in this case, some of the private donors that came forward to support us.

“It’s massive for the community of Délın̨ę.”

Are there targets attached to this?

There isn’t necessarily a table in a document saying the funding will create this many jobs, or have that much impact on local salaries.

But there are some big figures available for the amount of land the agreement could end up protecting.

Eventually, the Indigenous signatories to this agreement say, they want to be responsible for protecting more than “two percent of lands and inland waters in Canada” – as part of a national goal of conserving 30 percent of the country by 2030.

Tables in the draft agreement suggest that could mean newly protecting 17.3 percent of the NWT in the years ahead. Including existing protected areas, about 30 percent of the territory’s land mass could be affected by the agreement in one way or another.

That idea can be controversial.

In the past, some NWT politicians have railed against the concept of the territory as something to be wrapped up and protected versus finding economic opportunities for its people.

In 2017, then-premier Bob McLeod told The Canadian Press disparagingly that southerners “want us to live in a large park.”

“We need jobs. We need work,” McLeod said at the time, a statement that implied the choice was between jobs or the vision of a park.

Backers of this agreement say it proves the NWT no longer has to choose between jobs and parks, between mines and conservation.

“Investments into conservation and stewardship led by Indigenous governments do not cancel out the other side of the economic equation around resource development and the other economic drivers of the northern economy. These conversations go hand in hand,” said Tsetso.

“This isn’t the be-all and end-all, the answer to every problem, but it’s going to be an important solution. It’s going to be an important step in a positive direction.”

“It’s the beginning of what could be a long-term solution to the issues that we have,” said Gaudet, asked how the $375-million deal affected his view of the Sahtu’s economic outlook.

“There’s so much potential that could come from it. It could be a big part of developing our resources when it comes to mining, oil and gas. This whole process could be setting the stage for that type of stuff,” he said.

“A lot of the Indigenous communities are not against that but we need to have our say. We need to have our input and, at the same time, be able to monitor all these activities that happen on our land so that it doesn’t destroy and rape and pillage the land like it used to. We could help figure out how to develop a balance.

“There’s going to be a real need for our people to be involved in all of that, and I see this as a real beginning of a long-term process that will sustain and maintain our people, our culture and our languages.”

What happens next?

“The next steps are setting up the governance structures that will help oversee the distribution of the funds,” said Tsetso, returning to the subject of how the money gets out of pot one and into the hands of Indigenous nations and their members.

“There will be directors identified to help support the workings of how we get the funds out the door.

“This is the start of a really big journey. The real work begins from here, because getting the resources out the door to support the vision of this fund is ultimately the goal.”

No firm timeline for that was immediately stated in the lead-up to Thursday’s agreement signing ceremony in Behchokǫ̀.

However, almost all of the money is set to be delivered into the trust in year one and there will be an expectation that things move quickly.

The example financial plan included with the draft agreement – which, again, is not a final document but merely a guide – imagined $19 million being spent in the opening year of the agreement.

“Finally, we’ve got some support to help us on the ground, to actually get us back to the land – to start documenting our use of all the land, all the old stories, the legends, grave sites,” said Gaudet.

He said Délı̨nę residents will be able to use their share of the money to “start preparing for the future with all the information we require to make good, sound decisions about what we do with our land and resources.”

“We haven’t had that,” he said, “since 1921, when the treaty was first signed.”

Correction: November 14, 2024 – 13:22 MT. This article initially stated the private donors are the Metcalf Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and Waltons Trust. While those are the only donors listed in the draft agreement, Pew subsequently said there are other donors such as the McLean Foundation, Sitka Foundation, Bezos Earth Fund, Ducks Unlimited, Wyss Foundation and Zoma Lab.

Update: November 15, 2024 – 9:13 MT. This article originally listed the Fort Good Hope Dene Band and Fort Norman Métis Community among signatories to the agreement. While that is correct in the sense that those are the names listed in the agreement itself, leaders of those communities asked for the article to be updated to reflect that in each instance, leaders had signed on behalf of the local Dene Band, Dene Land Corporation and Métis Land Corporation. We have updated the wording in the list of signatories accordingly. Meanwhile, we’ve removed a reference to the Sahtu Secretariat as an example of an Indigenous nation that isn’t a signatory. While that is correct, the secretariat is structured in such a way that it does not itself own or administer any land.