Increasingly, Indigenous nations are asserting their own frameworks for impact assessment (IA) when resource development projects are proposed in their ancestral territories. Impoverished consultation and decision-making processes found in provincial and federal IA legal frameworks have compelled Indigenous nations to develop IAs based on their own legal orders; these IAs challenge the presumed unilateral authority of settler laws. Various forms of Indigenous-led IA have emerged, each exhibiting unique characteristics dependent on the context of the community, the territory, the project, and the Indigenous nation’s relationship with Canadian governments and proponents.

Indigenous-led IAs demonstrate varying levels of Indigenous control over both the process and the final decision-making. Some have been developed to operate in conjunction with Crown IAs while others have been structured to function completely outside of Crown frameworks.

As these different models emerge, it is necessary to closely examine whether, and how, they strengthen Indigenous jurisdiction over land and resources more broadly. Important questions include:

• How do Indigenous-led IAs articulate with Crown IAs?

• Whose laws govern the IA; how is power mediated in these contexts?

• What compromises are made when Indigenous and Crown IA processes become integrated?

By bringing practitioners of Indigenous-led assessment together with Indigenous legal scholars, the aim is to stimulate robust dialogue and to critically engage with pressing questions surrounding the relationship between Indigenous jurisdiction and the conduct of IAs in Canada. By delving into how Indigenous-led IAs are being constructed, and how they are operating on the ground, insights will be generated into how Canadian IA law may better work with Indigenous legal orders, and the potential of IA to become an arena for strengthening legal pluralism in Canada