Fostering Indigenous Partnerships: UBC Ventures' Journey Towards Truth & Reconciliation
In a continued effort to support Indigenous partnerships through education and relationship building, entrepreneurship@UBC, with the support of Discovery Foundation, reached out to some of our ventures and partners to understand and learn from one another on opportunities to further promote Truth & Reconciliation across the University of British Columbia.
In a roundtable discussion with four entrepreneurship@UBC ventures including Salik Khan, Chief Experience Officer of Rohe Homes, Alexander Dungate, Co-Founder & CEO of OnDeck Fisheries AI, Reza Rezei, Co-Founder & CEO of Aqua Intelligent, Sean Lowrie, Head of External Affairs of ARCA, and Dr. Madjid Mohseni, Scientific Director of Community Circle, we met to discuss learnings from their respective First Nation collaborations and explore opportunities to develop more mutual and Indigenous-centered approaches for entrepreneurship@UBC ventures.
Each venture representative delivered a brief presentation describing the collaboration and communication they have had with a First Nation community. From our discussions, three central themes emerged:
- How to build reciprocal relationships
- How to have effective communication, and
- How to ensure that there is mutual commitment in a partnership.
These themes will be explored in our 4-part blog series as we dive into the learnings of these organizations in their path to truth and reconciliation in their venture building activities.
Rohe Homes
First up to present was Salik Khan of Rohe Homes. Rohe Homes produces foldable modular homes that can be set-up within four hours. They have been in partnership with the Homalco First Nation to help provide homes for the First Nation community. Early on, Khan learned from the First Nation that 15% of the Nations’ members were in need of housing, clearly identifying a mutual point for the two to come together and develop a reciprocal relationship. The Nation had lost their housing manager, and without this key resource within the nation, there was a need for additional coordination and project management time from the Rohe Homes team. Khan shared “cc-ing everyone” in communications regarding project development was vital. Additionally, actively engaging with the highest level of leadership, such as the Chief, and documenting everything to send back to the council further ensures a trust in the collaboration.
OnDeck Fisheries AI
Alexander Dungate from OnDeckFisheries AI, a sustainable, scalable, and accessible fisheries monitoring solution which monitors fish catch in real-time, spoke about his venture’s partnership with seven First Nations around the southern coast of British Columbia. Although Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has long mandated the use and presence of cameras onboard fishing vessels, the data recorded by these cameras is not open access. Meaning when a First Nation is challenged by the DFO, these nations have no access to data to dispute these claims. OnDeck Fisheries helped install their technology across fishing vessels in several coastal First Nations communities, which allowed for them to keep track of vessel movement activity, keep a camera record of their own activity, and test for zonal fishing pressure all while ensuring data sovereignty for the nation. Dungate emphasized, like our other venture founders, that communication was absolutely key, because despite what may have been clear coming from the venture perspective, it’s important to consistently check in given changing team dynamics and ongoing project development. We will dive into OnDeck’s efforts in managing effective communication with Coastal BC’s First Nations will be featured in future blog posts.
Aqua Intelligent
Next, we heard from Reza Rezai from Aqua Intelligent. The Aqua Intelligent platform optimizes water treatment to produce safe drinking water from water sources at any time. In remote areas such as Lytton and the Tataskweyak Cree Nation, First Nation members struggle with maintaining water quality due to aged and inefficient machinery with high maintenance costs. Traveling to the areas, inspecting and maintaining these small water systems created significant challenges that resulted in high costs for the community and a lot of work and stress for the First Nations operations staff. Communications challenges were also highlighted as the First Nations did not have a central communications person or community operator, which many of our venture founders are used to collaborating with. However, Rezai recognized that their third-party introduction through a non-profit had aided in building strong trust in the relationship. Rezai was able to collaborate with these nations and build a relationship based on trust to begin installing the Aqua Intelligent solutions. Once the treatment and monitoring systems were installed and running, the Aqua Intelligent team continued to work with the First Nations making sure the operations staff understood what potential water treatment issues could be flagged, ensuring they had a greater autonomy and understanding of treatment process issues as they came up.
Arca
Sean Lowrie then presented Arca, whose technology removes CO2 from the atmosphere and transforms it into rock. The Arca team is currently working on its first commercial demonstration project in Australia. Arca believes it critical to work effectively with the host Australian Indigenous community where their project is occurring, from a moral and business perspective. But working with Australian Indigenous groups involves different political structures, legal frameworks and histories are different from what we know here in Canada. So Lowrie’s team worked with a relationship broker in Australia to help seek out partnership opportunities with the Tjiwarl People of Western Australia, and has enlisted expert advice on effective Indigenous relations from the First Nations Major Project Coalition (FNMPC). Lowrie shared “there’s an interesting network of stakeholder pressure to ensure companies like ours generate community benefits. The people in Arca also want to create positive social and environmental impact.” Arca has certainly taken this pressure in stride through making a public commitment, sharing a robust plan in regard to Indigenous engagement, and transparently sharing their experience when it comes time to implement that plan.
Community Circle
Finally, Dr. Madjid Mohseni presented the Community Circle, a non-profit organization, previously known as RESEAU Centre for Mobilizing Innovation. Community Circle addresses drinking water challenges in Indigenous and rural communities and came out of the University of British Columbia as a research program 15 years prior. Their goal is to shift the focus of problem-solving conversations from products to services, to improve the livelihoods of Indigenous and rural communities through the lens of water health. In the subsequent blogs, we will examine further the work that Dr. Mohseni and his team have demonstrated commitment to in building reciprocal relationships that bring value and equity to the Indigenous communities.
We look forward to continuing these conversations as we learn more about some of our ventures and community partners in their exploration of Truth and Reconciliation. Please stay tuned for our other blogs as we dive into the themes of building reciprocal relationships and ensuring mutual commitment in a partnership.