With a focus on lands, resources, energy, critical minerals, climate policy and reconciliation, Katherine Koostachin has spent the past 15 years advancing Indigenous priorities.
Koostachin, a member of Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, says there are troubling gaps in Canada’s dealings with Indigenous peoples.
Koostachin was a speaker at this week’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference in Toronto. The PDAC conference is considered the world’s premier mineral exploration and mining convention.
“Right now, we’re shifting into a greener economy where we’re trying to electrify, especially in the mining operations,” she said, but Canada’s attention to climate concerns has taken a backseat to other priorities.
“Right now, in this geopolitical context, and with the recent election of Ontario and the US trade tariff war and the looming federal election, we’re actually at a point where we’re kind-of regressing in a sense of climate policy.”
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Koostachin is a former senior advisor of Indigenous policy and litigation in the Prime Minister’s Office. She spoke at a conference session titled Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change: Perspectives and Collaboration.
Affordability, the tariff war, calls to accelerate oil and gas extraction, the desire to speed up access to the country’s critical minerals and get them to global markets – “all of these have potential implications or there’s concerns from Indigenous communities how they participate in this process,” she said.
She takes issue with the lack of participation of Indigenous peoples in decision-making processes on these matters.
Engagement with Indigenous peoples on Canada’s climate change policies came late in the game, Koostachin said. She believes the same thing is happening with critical minerals.
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“What I found is that when the critical mineral strategy was being developed in 2022 by the federal government, Indigenous [inclusion] was kind-of an afterthought,” said Koostachin, who is vice-president of Indigenous relations and reconciliation for the Ottawa-based Sussex Strategy Group.
Before releasing the strategy, the federal government had to go back and address Indigenous concerns, Koostachin said, and at that point finally sought Indigenous participation in a more thoughtful analysis.
Koostachin believes the desire to accelerate the development of critical minerals provides an opportunity to reset the relationship between the federal government and Indigenous peoples.
“We need to be a part of this,” she said. “We don’t want to be left behind.”
There are inequities that need to be addressed, she said, using her own First Nation and the move toward electric vehicles as an example of such inequity.
“How are they going to get electric vehicles?” she said. “I just don’t see them withstanding the harsh climate as well, even though I know there’s supposed to be improvements.
“There’s a lot of change happening in society and I worry about people in my community.”
She highlighted the development of artificial intelligence as another inequity.
“They’re going to get further behind in a sense that it’s not their making,” she said. “And they will continue to be poor and they struggle.”
“I just don’t want our communities to be left behind,” she added. “Just because you’re accelerating something, don’t consider climate change and Indigenous as an afterthought.”
