Building trust: Rob Miller of Miller Titerle on Indigenous business partnerships and ESG

This experience made me reflect on my values and what I wanted from my career. I started discussing with my co-founder, Jim, the idea of creating a business law firm that did sophisticated work while being values-driven and purpose-based. We were excited about the concept and came up with our first mission statement, inspired by an afternoon on a sunny patio to help people do good things. Our goal was to show that sophisticated legal work doesn’t have to be limited to big law firms – lawyers can succeed by boldly standing for their values and the purpose behind their work.

In 2009, with the support of a client base I had developed, we left our previous firm. We were fortunate to work with large resource companies focused on ESG and emerging trends in consultation and accommodation, as well as Indigenous clients at the intersection of business law, resource development, and the reinvigoration of Indigenous communities, economies and nations. This mission has stayed with us, and today, our firm continues to serve a mix of forward-thinking businesses that care about ESG and Indigenous organizations that are increasingly driving the mainstream Canadian economy.

You will speak about Indigenous partnerships at the ESG summit. In your view, what are the most common challenges organizations face when attempting to engage with Indigenous communities?

There are a few key points I’d like to highlight, and I think these will be recurring themes throughout this discussion. One of the main ideas is the need to move away from the traditional Western business mindset, which often views relationships as transactional – focusing on one-off interactions to accomplish a specific task. Instead, there’s a growing emphasis on creating more holistic and comprehensive partnerships. This involves building evergreen relationships and fostering the right ecosystems for consent, where the intent of agreements isn’t just about achieving a single goal, like project development, but also advancing broader objectives tied to truth and reconciliation and supporting the revitalization of Indigenous nations, governments, and economies. Shifting from transactional to consent-based, relationship-driven agreements is a significant challenge for businesses.

Another challenge is what I refer to as “death by assumption.” Many companies enter engagements with Indigenous communities holding unexamined assumptions about the community’s long-term goals, objectives, and strategies. They often assume that the approach to engagement can be uniform across all communities. However, this is a significant misconception. The more companies, project developers, or governments can identify and challenge these assumptions early on, the more successful their engagements will be. The idea that a pan-Indigenous perspective applies universally is one of the biggest fallacies in the Indigenous engagement sector. Companies that approach these relationships with an open mind, ready to have genuine conversations about each community’s unique goals, will ultimately be more successful.

Could you discuss any examples of successful partnerships you’ve witnessed or been a part of and what made them effective?

I can think of several examples, particularly in British Columbia, where I’m based. There have been successful partnerships in the clean energy sector in our backyard. Many large projects that have bid into power calls in the past have demonstrated how energy companies can effectively engage with communities by understanding what drives them and aligns with their long-term goals. These companies have gone beyond just equity ownership and profit-sharing structures. They’ve creatively supported community goals like youth development, government initiatives, and providing access to advisory services or government relations expertise.