Services

They also often provide an opportunity to tell their truth to rectify past wrongs, helping to move toward reconciliation with both industrial developers and governments. WSSS works with communities to gather histories and stories in “a good way” that recognize community protocols and ways of knowing, while supporting a community’s quest for reconciliation, whether through the courts, in negotiations with government, or with the public. This means all material collected is carefully documented, and any oral histories are collected and transcribed using the most up-to-date technology available.

WSSS prides itself on transforming community visions for community histories into reality, the company has been involved with a broad range of community-led projects, including Indigenous governance histories; community displacements; community history books and genealogies; identification of cultural landscapes and sites; archival preservation and supporting the development of museum and heritage institutions. Does your Nation or community need support to capture, preserve, and present your community history?

Over the past decades, Indigenous Knowledge, Use, and Occupancy studies have come to play a key role in documenting and preserving historical and current knowledge, use, and occupancy of traditional territories by Indigenous peoples. WSSS has completed dozens of historical and current Indigenous Knowledge, Use, and Occupancy studies for Indigenous nations and communities to support participation in regulatory processes, legal proceedings, and government-to-government negotiations, as well as to document and preserve the knowledge of Indigenous Elders and land users.

Like all our work, WSSS’ Indigenous Knowledge, Use, and Occupancy studies use a participatory and community-based methodology that empowers communities to train members to conduct research, produce reports that reflect their knowledge and histories, preserve Indigenous knowledge and history, and participate with confidence in regulatory and legal proceedings.  Our high-quality reports use open-source, direct-to-digital technology that allows communities to control and manage all the information collected as part of the project.  Does your community need support to document and preserve its Indigenous Knowledge, Use, and Occupancy? 

At WSSS, we know that Indigenous peoples we cannot understand the long-term impacts of industrial projects and public policy without the more equitable participation of Indigenous governments and peoples.  As regulatory systems have slowly changed to incorporate more meaningful participation from Indigenous governments and communities, WSSS has supported numerous impact assessment reports for our Indigenous clients, including socio-economic impact assessments, cultural impact assessments, and disaster impact assessments for use in regulatory and legal proceedings.

We also support Indigenous control and participation in environmental monitoring, to make sure the information collected is informed by Indigenous knowledge and worldviews, provides answers to the priorities and questions of Indigenous peoples, and is owned, controlled, and accessible to Indigenous governments and peoples to the greatest extent possible.  Does your Nation or community need support to carry out an impact assessment or participate in community-based environmental monitoring? 

Since its inception in 2011, WSSS has provided support for Indigenous governments as they navigate the ever-evolving web of regulatory and legal requirements as industrial development proceeds on their traditional territories. This work has included providing training and capacity building materials for regulatory and industrial relations departments; supporting staff to gather information and participate in regulatory processes; and representing communities on policy, regulatory and monitoring organizations, and initiatives.

The last several years have also produced both new challenges and new opportunities for Indigenous self-government in Canada.  WSSS has support Indigenous governments to seize these new opportunities through support for constitutional design, the recovery of traditional governance structures, and creation of more efficient and effective governance institutions and bureaucratic procedures.  Does your Nation or community need support to manage regulatory processes or address governance challenges and opportunities?

While cumulative effects are typically defined narrowly, to focus on the cumulative effects to lands, water, and other components of the natural environment from industrial development, we work with our clients to develop a more holistic approach to cumulative effects that looks at the cumulative socio-economic, cultural, and environmental effects of public policy and regulations, in addition to industrial development, on Indigenous Nations, governments, and communities.

It’s not enough, however, to track and monitor cumulative effects: it is critical that Indigenous governments are able to manage cumulative effects in an active way, consistent with their values, priorities, and knowledge.  At WSSS, we work with clients to develop Cumulative Effects Management Systems that can be integrated into the governance structures and decision-making institutions of the Nation and the community.  With the right information and a strong management system in place, Indigenous governments are better able to manage and reduce cumulative effects within their traditional territories.  Does your Nation or community need help to better manage cumulative effects?

At WSSS, we know that we are all Treaty Peoples, and that respecting our constitution means honouring Treaty and defending Indigenous rights.  Over the past several years, we have worked closely with clients to develop frameworks to assess the impacts of public policy and industrial development on Indigenous rights.  In addition, we have collaborated with clients to gather information to assess the cumulative infringement to Indigenous rights brought about by the activities of non-Indigenous governments and industrial proponents.

As so many of our clients know, the nearly unimpeded infringement upon Indigenous rights for decades and centuries has placed great burdens upon Indigenous peoples and provided great benefit to non-Indigenous governments and peoples across the country.  That’s why we work with our Indigenous clients to gather and present information on the infringement to Treaty and Indigenous rights to support legal proceedings and government-to-government negotiations, in the spirit of reconciliation.  Does your Nation or community need support to gather information on the infringement of your Treaty and Indigenous rights?