On November 13, at the Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase (IPSS) in Vancouver, consultant Janis Brooks and Lisa Grisenthwaite of Highland Valley Copper used their Teck-sponsored session, “Fireside Chat: The Bridge Within,” to make a simple point with big consequences: partnerships work better when Indigenous employees are treated as strategic partners, not an afterthought.
“Our reconciliation efforts and our partnerships with Indigenous Nations are stronger when we see Indigenous employees as strategic partners,” Brooks said, setting the frame for a conversation about culture, trust, and concrete changes on site.
Brooks opened by acknowledging the day’s hosts and ceremonies, then introduced her own path: nearly two decades helping organizations in the energy and resource sector embed Indigenous engagement and reconciliation.
The project lens, she argued, is necessary but incomplete. Real success, she said, depends on what happens inside companies, how people are hired, mentored, retained, and heard. That is where partnership either flourishes or falters.
A shift built on humility and listening
Pressed on how Teck began shifting its approach, Brooks said it started with humility at the top: “Having leadership fully support this, not just support in a way that said. We want to carry it forward, but to support (it) through a way of trust, we want to listen and build alongside our employees.”
Rather than create a conventional resource group overnight, the team “went back to Indigenous ways, and we sat in a circle, to really listen and hold space for people to just show up in that authentic way.”
Grisenthwaite, who joined Teck as an environmental coordinator in 2013 and recently moved into a project engagement role, traced her own journey back into culture and leadership.
Returning to school at 36, she found mentors on the Environment Team and, later, a new purpose supporting colleagues. Hearing “stories of racism was eye opening to me,” she said, which is why she stepped up through the Highland Valley Copper Indigenous Council to help make the workplace safer and more supportive.
Practical actions: policies, culture and belonging
The discussion was deliberately practical. Listening circles with Indigenous employees across multiple sites surfaced specific barriers, and the company began removing them.
One early outcome: co-developing a smudging policy and hosting the first on-site Indigenous employee smudge at the mine—“a big deal,” Brooks noted, in an industrial setting where safety culture is paramount and historical relationships have been fraught.
Another was rethinking cultural leave, after employees said respect for partnership must include respect for individuals practicing their culture: “How do we make you feel seen, valued and supported?” Brooks asked.
Crucially, Brooks stressed that the aim is not a bolt-on program: “It hasn’t been an add-on initiative… [but] a new way of aligning to corporate values and a vehicle to elevate that.”
That required embedding reconciliation work across HR, procurement, and project delivery, and measuring success in outcomes that actually endure. “Reconciliation lives in retention. It does not live in the numbers of your onboarding,” she said.
Trust built one step at a time
When asked how to increase participation when self-identification is low, Brooks counselled patience and accountability: the first Indigenous employee gathering drew just three people, and growth “didn’t grow quickly, it grew at the Speed of Trust.” Follow-through mattered: when leadership acknowledged past harms and demonstrably kept promises, more people chose to show up.
Grisenthwaite closed with a message about investment and opportunity: “Something that’s really meant a lot to me is that investment that they’ve made, in not only me, but any other Indigenous employees that are ready to step forward, and see growth.”
Her own move into Teck’s Mine Life Extension projects shows how internal culture change links directly to advancement, and, by extension, to stronger external partnerships with Nations.
‘Soft skills’ as strategy
Brooks’ final note reframed “soft skills” as strategy: cultural safety and belonging, she said, are “strategic conditions” leaders can create on purpose.
Get those conditions right, through listening, policy changes, and shared ownership of the work, and agreements become easier to implement, contractors succeed, and people go home “in the same whole way that they showed up.”
The bridge within, in other words, is how reconciliation moves from paper to practice.
Resource Works News
