Kelly Lendsay, Chief Transformation Officer, LUMINARY and CEO, Indigenous Works, delivered the luncheon keynote on May 15 at Blue Cities 2025. It was so well-received that we wanted to share his remarks with our network. Here is an excerpt from Kelly’s speech:

The relationship between corporate Canada and Indigenous peoples in the early 1990s was a rocky one. In 1991, the Mulroney Government initiated one of the longest and costliest commissions, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, which released its report in 1996. It’s a fantastic report — still the prescription that we need today. It called to build institutions; it called for sovereignty; it called for a renewed relationship, with a number of actions.

The next year, the Royal Bank was approached to do some papers, related to the Royal Commission and the Royal Bank. They teamed up with CANDO, the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers and myself to produce the report, The Cost of Doing Nothing, that was launched in October 1997. It was groundbreaking, in that we focused corporate Canada on the need to change the paradigm when it comes to dealing with Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

We’ve changed the social capital in the country — we are more engaged. In the 1990s, a poll showed that 60% of Canadians overall and 80% of Quebecers and Maritimers said that they had never or rarely met an Indigenous person. Where did the Oka crisis happen? Quebec. Where did the Burnt Church lobster dispute happen? The Maritimes.  Little or no social capital… we did know each other.  Fast forward to today, where we have more social, economic and political economy. We have reconciliation. We now know each other better and we are seeking to understand each other.

I did my MBA in the early 90s. I believed we needed more business leadership. So, I looked at how to get more Aboriginal students into business education. From that initial MBA project work with three colleagues, John Brennan (Dean), Jack Vick (Associate Dean) and Doug Bicknell (Dean MBA Program), we agreed that we could do something about this. So we started the first Aboriginal business education program in Canada in 1994. I was the first Scotiabank Director of Aboriginal Business Education Program. Then in 1998 I stepped onto the national scene, with Indigenous Works (formerly The Aboriginal Human Resource Council of Canada), as the inaugural President and CEO. IW was a recommendation in the 1996 RCAP report which reinforced the need for new Indigenous institutions, because strong institutions give civil society and civil communities structure and confidence.

There are four pillars to exclusion and four pillar to inclusion): social, political, education and economic. The four pillars work together. You have heard about the education pillar and residential schools and gravesite discoveries. There was also social and cultural exclusion which made ceremonies illegal, as well as the pass system to control travel and contact — you could not meet in groups of greater than six. Economic exclusion: The Indian Act prevented you from owning property on reserves — you couldn’t sell your grain on the open exchange like other farmers and had to work through the Indian agent. Our war veterans weren’t given land like their fellow vets. Political exclusion: The Indian Act, one of the oldest and most racist pieces of legislation, did not allow Indians to vote until 1960 and you couldn’t hire a lawyer to take the government to land claims court.

Today, we’re practicing the four pillars of inclusion. People are celebrating their ceremonies and their culture. There’s political power and growth in education. We’re bringing the creation stories into the classrooms. There is economic inclusion and excitement. It’s moving the pendulum in the right way. We’ve got to stay focused on the pillars of inclusion.

As Carol Ann Hilton talks about in her book, Indigenomics: Taking a Seat at the Economic Table, we’re in a changing economy. The Indigenous economy is worth about $60 billion and we’re going to get to $100 billion. We have some of the biggest wind parks and solar parks on Indian land. There is tremendous growth, with 500 Indigenous economic development corporations generating billions of GDP for all Canadians.

Let me say something about how my organization works with employers. Indigenous Works’ Human Resources Division (IW-HRD) created the Inclusion Continuum, a system with diagnostics that measure if you’re actually improving your performance in terms of workplace engagement. It’s a competency-based model. You define the competencies needed to be effective in your engagement, partnership and workplace practices. Once these competencies are defined, you can train people in the competencies to increase their personal and workplace inclusion performance. You intentionally develop your competencies and climb the Inclusion Continuum.

There are seven stages, starting with:

1) Indifference — inclusion is not the radar for anyone.

2) Intimidation. What’s the minimum we need to do to avoid an employment equity audit, human rights complaint or lawsuit? It’s a minimalist approach.

3) Image.  We have Indigenous art in the boardroom and a great looking report and website, but not much substance — no Indigenous employees or Indigenous suppliers.

From there, you can move to stage 4:

4) Initiation. The business case is discovered. It usually starts either in the C suite, where senior executives say, “we got to do something here.” This is when there is a real business and social imperative, or sometimes, it starts lower down in an organization where a group of people say, “there’s a real opportunity.” Some things we’re doing here we could expand to really position our organization or our company to do more.

From there it needs to go to stage 5:

5) Incubation, where you start to incubate and grow inclusion as a core competency. You’ve now built out your business case. You started or completed the Inclusion Continuum diagnostic about where you’re currently at.

From there you go to stage 6:

6) Integration. It’s a senior leadership imperative. And it cuts across five areas of every organization, whether you’re the public sector, whether you’re private sector. It cuts across human resources, procurement, corporate social responsibility, today would be CSR and ESG. Those are the big three. Then, marketing and communications and leadership. You integrate your inclusion strategy across all five business domains, and you benchmark how you are doing as an organization.

7) Inclusion, where are you continuing to hone your workplace inclusion and engagement strategies, practices and performance. You are extending the business case for inclusion to your suppliers, networks and industry associations. A commitment to climbing the Inclusion Continuum signals to the Indigenous workforce that your goal is to be an Employer of Choice.

You need to coach and train people in the employment space at your organizations. You can prepare people and then you can be better at climbing the Inclusion Continuum. And, when you have the workplace inclusion performance metrics, you can fight for your budgets to say, this is why we’re doing it, we’re actually making some progress. So it’s not just rhetoric and it’s really going beyond the “cosmetic side” of inclusion.

There are nine competencies to master. I’ll give you three examples of competencies. Value and validation. Each business division has an accountability framework and metrics for the company’s inclusion strategy. HR does. But does procurement?  A second competency, social impact. How can CSR, which is an investment in community, be leveraged back to HR and procurement strategies? How can it actually pull and attract people to your workforce? How do you work on literacy, career development, mentoring? They are very deliberate and purposeful strategies. Marketing can get involved — in your newsletter, in your annual report. Then the big competency — number one — is leadership. You will only get so far. But without senior leadership, the C suite, all on board, you really won’t be able to go beyond the incubation stage.

Let’s consider your organization’s brand, the “positioning competency.” What’s your brand in the Indigenous workforce or Indigenous business community? It’s your promise. Within the organization, if you can start to use your brand and your brand messaging and what people value about your workplace, you can use these very same things with the Indigenous workforce. We invest in community. What’s top of mind for indigenous youth? Community? See what I mean? We just help you connect the dots.

I’ll give an example: Bird Construction. In 2001, I was the first director to serve on the Canadian Apprenticeship Board for Canada, focused on trades and apprenticeships. Fast forward 20 years. Rebecca Kragnes, Director of Indigenous Relations and Community Engagement at Bird Construction, is not only a director, but she also became the first Indigenous chairperson of the Canadian Apprenticeship Board. From pillars of exclusion to pillars of inclusion. What’s your brand? What does this say to industry? To the public sector? To Indigenous people and communities?

Let me underscore the importance and the critical role of innovation. Indigenous innovation is not new. Every society has had to innovate to prosper, including Indigenous peoples and nations around the world. What we need to do is harness research and innovation to grow healthy economies, healthy communities and a healthy workforce, including healthy water systems. Luminary came about as an idea to harness research and innovation. We secured the interest of 150 partners from the academic community, Indigenous business community, academic researchers, NGOs. And we co-created the Luminary strategy.

As an example, we just heard that the Atlantic First Nations Water Authority has just been granted a $5-million grant for five years to do research on Indigenous economic research from NSERC. How do we take that $5-million investment and then multiply it 100 times across this country? Because hundreds of Indigenous communities have water issues and innovation challenges. And how do we make sure they don’t duplicate what you already did? The Atlantic First Nations are going to generate knowledge. You need to take the knowledge, share it here and now, then do another research project to expand and advance the water ecosystems. You create this reciprocity; you create this circular knowledge transfer system. And so that, collectively, we’re all working together to accelerate these water solutions.

So, what’s very interesting is this question in terms of CWN and Luminary: What is the current state in terms of innovation and research in the Indigenous water-related system? What’s the current state with Indigenous businesses and communities? Who are the knowledge keepers in the communities? How can we develop knowledge networks and knowledge transfer systems? That’s a role for Luminary and CWN to pursue.

The coyotes prefer hunting with badgers. It’s an unlikely partnership. And so, what I encourage us all to do, is we need unlikely partnerships to really take inclusion to the next level. Innovation will transform our economies, jobs and wellbeing for all Canadians. This is inclusion at work.

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Connect with Kelly Lendsay on LinkedIn.

For more information about Luminary, contact Terri Lynn Morrison, Chief Program Officer.

Follow Luminary on LinkedIn.

For more information about Indigenous Works, visit their website.