Implementation Evaluation and Socio-Economic Impacts

Theme Co-Leads

Alastair Campbell, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.

Overview

Treaty implementation issues

Few treaty implementation evaluations have been conducted, and no clear process, approach, or benchmarks for implementation evaluation and assessment have been developed. Building a searchable database of existing analyses and documents, including those generated by Indigenous governments and academic contributions, will be one theme deliverable, allowing for issue and pattern analysis.

Do modern treaties make a difference?

A second deliverable will be the development of tools to measure the impact of treaty implementation on Indigenous well-being trying to assess if modern treaties make a difference in the lives of collectives and individual Indigenous peoples?

Very few analyses look at implementation mechanisms per se or take a broader comparative look at the successes and failures of land claim implementation as a whole. This tendency to focus on a single case or a very few cases limits the capacity for generalization or for identifying common patterns. More research is required to be able to draw general conclusions regarding treaty implementation that allow for communities/treaty groups to compare experiences, develop common indicators for measuring treaty implementation across cases.

Implementation issues often arise from Canada’s adoption of approaches to interpreting and fulfilling its treaty obligations that Indigenous signatories view as inconsistent with the treaties’ spirit, intent, or contractual and legal obligations. In particular, common to all LCAC members is an understanding that while land claims agreements recognize Indigenous rights, the agreements are also intended to improve the social and material conditions of Indigenous peoples. Thus, faltering implementation can slow, undermine, or prevent efforts to achieve improved economic prosperity and improved social conditions of Indigenous peoples.

Objectives

To address the dearth of treaty implementation evaluations and contribute to developing processes, approaches and benchmarks for implementation evaluation and assessment
To build a searchable database of existing analyses and documents, including those generated by Indigenous governments and academic contributions, in order to support issue and pattern analysis
To develop and identify meaningful quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure the impact of treaty implementation on Indigenous well-being, in order to assess if modern treaties make a difference in the lives of collectives and individual Indigenous peoples. Indicators will be inclusive of indigenous perspectives of well-being, and thus assess whether the treaty had a positive impact from Indigenous perspectives of well-being.

Initial theme research questions

Treaty implementation issues

What are the prevalent issues and recurrent patterns in treaty implementation conflict?
Having Implementation plan, implementation meetings, does it make a difference?

Impact of treaties on well-being

Do modern treaties make a difference in the lives of collectives and individual Indigenous peoples?
What are measures of this success?
How do we gather Indigenous perspectives and use Indigenous indices to answer this?
Are there qualitative and quantitative approaches that can be brought to bear or developed?
Can we expect the treaty effect (regaining some fate control?) to offset the long-term negative impacts of colonization (loss of fate control)? Issue of collective vs individual fate control