WABIGOON LAKE OJIBWAY NATION — Officials with Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and an engineering firm say their new partnership will give the First Nation more direct control over environmental monitoring and study in its territory.
Wabigoon Lake is the majority stakeholder in Ganawendan Aki Environmental, a limited partnership that also includes KGS Group — a consulting firm with offices in several North American cities. A media release says the new enterprise will focus on environmental services, and will be “built on cultural integrity and technical excellence.”
The two have been working together on a number of projects for years, Wabigoon Lake Chief Clayton Wetelainen told Newswatch in an interview. This venture, he said, gives the First Nation more direct leadership in environmental study work on projects within its territory.
“We will hold management and the direction within the company,” Wetelainen said. “This is more control and more direction Wabigoon Lake wishes to take.”
The First Nation and KGS have been working together since at least 2019 when Wetelainen said they collaborated on studying remediation of the English River.
Annie Dietrich, Ganawendan Aki’s president, told Newswatch the goal is to make sure Wabigoon members and Indigenous people from the region benefit from opportunities with the company, so “that we’re seeing some parity and, over time, that we have a majority of Indigenous employees as well.”
Main areas the company will focus on include environmental and cultural monitoring, so the First Nation has, according to Dietrich, “eyes and a say, essentially, on what’s happening in their territory,” and that “work that’s being done on their lands and in their territory is being done in a way that aligns with their Anishinaabe values and their cultural protocols.”
They will also be involved with support for developing environmental impact assessments and working through regulatory approvals, as well as focusing on “heritage resources” and archeological studies, she said.
The latter, Wetelainen said, is to identify “high potential sites that … should not be disturbed.”
A media release says, overall, the company will focus on baseline environmental data collection, site assessments, environmental and cultural monitoring, remediation efforts and community engagement.
Wetelainen said that the organization will be involved in Wabigoon Lake’s own approval processes that are running parallel to ongoing assessment work by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization as it seeks national regulatory approval for a deep geological repository to store nuclear waste. Wabigoon Lake and Ignace were chosen to be host communities for the Revell Lake-area project.
Wetelainen has said it must pass “not only Canada’s regulatory process but our own regulatory approval process.”
Other initiatives Wetelainen and Dietrich said the company would be well-positioned to work on include the Waasigan Transmission Line’s second phase between Atikokan and Dryden (which is slated to run through Wabigoon Lake’s territory), and a number of mining and construction projects.
Wetelainen said company leadership is in place and several employees have been hired on, and said he expects an initial staff complement could eventually be in the range of 10 to 20 people, depending on which projects come down the pipe and how involved they are.
“The two partners are going to … lend capacity when that is needed on a project,” he said. “And once they’re established and starting to — all the mechanisms and employees in place — it’ll start to stand alone.”
Dietrich said the goal is to create a long-lasting entity.
“So, not just be good enough, but really develop something that’s lasting,” Dietrich said. “There’s an opportunity, because of some of these larger projects, to develop a skill set that’s homegrown, that is really not just an arm of a larger consulting firm, that can stand on its own two feet.”
