Aboriginal Involvement Program


The Foothills Research Institute’s Aboriginal Involvement Program works with Aboriginal communities, resource-based industries and the Province of Alberta to develop a process that better involves Aboriginal communities in land management decisions. To date, the five Aboriginal communities involved in the program have documented and are storing 2400 cultural sites in one central, protected database. Subsequently, four companies (Coal Valley Resources Ltd., Shell Canada Limited, Suncor Energy Inc and West Fraser Mills) have used the pilot Referral Process resulting in 91 cultural sites protected from potential disturbance from industrial activities. 

 The three elements of the Aboriginal Involvement Program are:

  1. Traditional cultural studies: Aboriginal communities collect, document and store sites that are of social, cultural and spiritual importance.
  2. Referral process: Traditional cultural sites are entered into a geographic information system (GIS) database. Prior to a development, industry enters the location of its proposed development into the same GIS database. A database query determines which Aboriginal communities need to be contacted for potential consultation and provides that information to industry. The referral process does not identify precise locations of culturally significant sites; that information is owned solely by the Aboriginal communities with ties to those sites. 
  3. Supporting Aboriginal – industry site visits: When a proposed industrial development is in the vicinity of a cultural site, Program staff may facilitate meetings between industry and the affected Aboriginal community.