Welcome to Drum Beats, the must-listen to podcast for investors interested in Indigenous
investment in Canada.
Born from the Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit, the show focuses on the intersection
of Indigenous economic strategies and investment opportunities.
I'm Mark McNacca and my co-hosts Robert Brant and I are joined today by Mark Cevestre, senior
advisor Mokwete, as well as the former founding member of the National Aboriginal Trust Officers
Association, commonly referred to as NTOA.
With his expertise in Indigenous policy, he explains the importance of shared values in
Indigenous investment, training opportunities for Indigenous communities through procurement,
and helping non-Indigenous investors make the most of their portfolios.
Join us as we explore how these critical conversations are reshaping economic development across
Canada.
Mark Cevestre, thanks very much for joining us and welcome to Drum Beats.
Thank you, nice to be here.
Great to have you.
You've worn several hats over the years, Mark, in and around investing by Indigenous, non-Indigenous
organizations, communities.
So it's a real pleasure to have you and spend a bit of time with us and sort of talk a little
bit about some issues at the forefront.
But before we get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Where are you from?
And what are you sitting today?
Well thanks for having me.
I'm Mark Cevestre.
I'm Haudenosaunee Mohawk.
I live here in my home on the Six Nations of the Grand River, First Nation in Ontario.
We're about an hour south of Toronto.
I'm on the 1784 Haldimantrack Grant Lands.
Our community supported the British during the American Revolution and lost our homelands
in Upper New York State.
Rob, your family and my family were probably pretty close at the time around Lake Champlain.
But in 1784, we finally were given the land ceded by the Mississaugas, the Adishinaabe
people, granted to us six miles on either side of the Grand River in Southern Ontario.
So originally 950,000 acres.
And today, Six Nations sits on 48,000 acres.
So there was some erosion of our lands.
But we've been able to make a lot and do a lot here.
I'm a Mount Allison University graduate.
I went out east to New Brunswick to play football, the North American football.
And spent some time with the federal government out there working in indigenous fairs and
economic development and ultimately moved back, got married to a beautiful Mi'kmaq lady
from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.
We moved back to Ontario where I was the branch manager for a Bank of Montreal branch that
was established on a First Nation outside of London, Ontario.
And in 1999, I took a role on as the general manager for the Mississaugas at the Credit
First Nation Community Trust, which was a land claim settlement trust.
And we get to invest the funds in the publicly traded markets and utilize the revenues for
community projects.
So that's where a lot of the work that I've been doing over the last 25 years comes from.
And looking forward to taking you through a bit of that journey today.
Excellent.
Our families and ancestors were very close at the time.
And in fact, Mark's ancestors were also close to all of us, weren't they, Mark?
Yes, really interesting conversation.
Rob and I met because Rob was up on stage and I saw the name and introduced myself and
asked him, are you a descendant of Chief Joseph Brandt?
Because my ancestor fought under the leadership of Chief Joseph Brandt as a Brandt loyalist
in the Niagara area.
They came, all the Scottish background came up from New York.
I can't pronounce the particular name, but they all came up and brothers fought on the
both side, but he chose the right side to fight on.
And we all remain loyal to the dictator across the pond as opposed to down the street.
And that's proved relevant in the past few years, once again.
So that was great to hear that story.
It just shows those ties that come back.
And Mark, this was really the reason why we decided to do this after Rob explained, you
know, firsthand, because a lot of Canadians read about it.
But if you don't hear it personally, you don't really understand in depth the issues.
And, you know, we said we needed to do something about that.
So that's how we set up the summit.
So it's great to have you here on the podcast.
So welcome.
Thank you.
And the Mount A football program, I guess that explains the football helmets in the
background.
That's right.
Yeah.
I've been on the Board of Regents for the school and very happy to try to it's very
small university in rural New Brunswick, but it is a very powerful educational institution
that has been listed as the number one undergraduate universe, small undergraduate university in
Canada for about 30, almost almost 30 of the last 35 years.
So we're very proud of our school and tried to do the best we can to continue to produce
great students.
Well, well done to you for giving back the way you are when you're wearing so many other
hats at the same time.
Yeah.
Take the football helmet off for a second.
Yeah.
You mentioned Mississauga is of the credit First Nation and the community trust.
That must have been one of the early trusts and and we around when it was established.
Well, I came in two years later.
It was settled in April of 1997.
It was a 12.7 million dollar settlement for a 200 acre parcel of land and along the Credit
River and what is today Mississauga, Ontario, obviously named after the Mississauga people.
So they moved, the government moved the community to where they are today, just adjacent to
six nations here along Highway six between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
And at the time, apparently they had forgotten to put their funds for the land transactions
in the bank account of the community.
So 150 years later, it was now worth 12.7 million dollars.
And the idea was that you take that funds and set it aside in a way that the community
can't erode it quickly.
And so investing it in the publicly traded markets was the idea and a trust fund.
So it's sort of separate funds.
You have to keep them accounted for separately from the First Nation monies.
In this case, the community wanted to have a community board of trustees that manage
those funds so it's separate from any decision chief and council would make.
So they set that up.
So two years later in October of 1999, I just happened to be in a position where my wife
had started to, was working for a gentleman who was a trustee and realized we were moving
from Toronto to around this area.
And he said, well, we need a general manager and Mark, you've got that background that
would be perfect for it.
It was government experience and banking background.
So I stepped in in 1999 and it was about just over 13 million dollars at the time.
And the idea was that we had to create a business plan, how we're going to utilize the funds
and so got that all set up and realized that it was a big learning curve in terms of managing
community monies and dealing with investment managers and how we're investing the funds.
So we had got everything established so then the revenue that we generate, the interest
in dividends, capital gains each year would be going to what we call a revenue fund.
And that's the money that we can then fund community projects.
So we have the chief and councilor band department applying to us for funds and our trustees
get to make the decision on what's funded.
So we've been funding a lot of education related graduation awards and supports for students
and tutoring and literacy programs.
We also fund a lot of cultural and traditional materials.
The Mississauga people are the traditional landholders and rights holders for the Toronto
GTA area and so they really wanted to establish that kind of history for the peoples in the
Toronto area.
So we support a lot of the work that they do in those areas and other things like infrastructure
and water lines, housing, those types of things that we fund.
So yeah, it's been interesting and then through the journey, my own personal journey there,
we recognize that a lot of times this was one of the early trust funds and indigenous
trust funds in Canada and a lot more were happening.
So I was in contact with a couple other indigenous trust fund managers and we recognized there
was a need for a national organization that shared our story, shared our experiences and
so that this community's coming forward, we're having to reinvent the wheel every time some
money was coming into a community for a settlement.
We wanted to bring together not only the communities that were investing or had trusts, but we
also brought in the people who we dealt with on a regular basis.
So the investment management community, the lawyers, the accountants, the advisory services
that we would utilize to help set these things up was critical because we needed to be better
aware and understand the industry itself as an indigenous community.
So we had to create proper expectations of what these funds could do and how they could
be invested.
And we also wanted to help the industry have a better understanding of who we were and
why we were investing.
And so once we got that set up, we created the National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association
in 2006 and started holding our own national conferences.
We developed an online training program and did some regional workshops.
So that was very helpful to a lot of communities who are then settling claims with Canada or
the provinces and just realistically helping them understand how if you wanted to go into
a trust fund, then how can you set it up?
How could it be more representative of the community and the needs of the particular
communities that were involved?
So it was quite a satisfying journey at that point.
I bet.
Was there ever pressure with the trust fund of the Mississaugas of the Credit Fund to
disperse money more quickly?
That yeah.
Give them credit for organizing the trust fund in a way that is separate from the politics.
But there's also a lot of foresight there to set up a fund that hopefully will continue
to benefit those people for years and years to come.
Yeah.
It happens.
And those discussions are really becoming pretty prevalent today with newer settlements
in Canada.
The pressure on the elected leadership to do upper capita distribution.
A lot of these settlements are all distributed amongst the current band members.
I really think there's a lot more discussion that needs to happen in terms of what you
really want to do with these funds because everybody kind of has that need within them
to say, well, I want my portion of it.
Mississaugas of the Credit did settle a second land claim in 2011 for the Greater Toronto
area and they distributed quite a bit out of it at that point.
And then they went completely the other way.
Instead of a community board of trustees, they hired a corporate trustee who really
just invests the money themselves and then distributes all the revenue at the end of
the year to the council who then have some parameters around how they would invest that.
But that really put a lot of pressure on the community.
Then they actually wanted to have a discussion about what they were going to do with our
little trust.
And we were really proud of it.
We've grown that $13 million trust to almost $29 million today.
We funded $9 million worth of community projects.
And the one really important thing that we did, so through the work of the National Aboriginal
Trust Officers Association, we connected with a group called SHARE, which is the Shareholder
Association for Research and Education, and they are an advocacy group for pension funds
and foundations and high net worth individuals.
And they were really interested in connecting with us to bring in the Indigenous component
in it.
Because what we were really realizing was that we're investing and bringing with, hiring
quality investment managers.
But unless we tell them who we are, we're investing with their values.
And their values are essentially make as much money as possible with the wide universe of
investments that are out there.
So we could potentially be investing in companies that are doing great harm to our communities,
both environmentally and culturally and rights-wise.
So in the connection with SHARE, I'll never forget Peter Chapman, who is the executive
director at the time, says, you can have that values conversation with your managers because
they're already doing it for their other clients.
And I said, how do you mean?
He says, you don't tell me that they're telling their religious clients and faith-based pension
funds to invest in defense industry or alcohol or anything like that that's completely contrary
to their values.
So you can have that conversation with them.
And I thought that was great.
That's really what I needed to know.
And around 2016, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report came out in Canada on the
residential schools and the impact on Indigenous communities, a lot of Canadians were, OK,
well, what does that really mean?
And we had the foresight to say, well, let's create this organization.
And we've called it the Reconciliation and Responsible Investment Initiative, a partnership
between SHARE and NATOA.
And for Indigenous investors, it was helping them understand the link between their cultural,
traditional values, the values that have managed them in their communities and managing their
wealth, managing their traditions and their investment policy.
Because we really saw that there was a link.
And we had to go and it was really a discussion about talk amongst yourselves, your elders,
your community, what are the values that run your community and manage your community?
Now, let's incorporate them into your investment policy so that we can share with the investment
manager to show that what goes into the portfolio is really important.
What's the impact of the companies we had?
One of my former chairpersons at Mississauga, a wonderful lady named Julie LaForme, unfortunately
she's passed, but she really made the comment that stuck with me a long time that says,
we can invest and make a profit, but at what cost?
If the cost is our rights and our culture and our integrity, then we're really failing
our people.
So we put that together.
And the other part of Reconciliation Responsible Investment Initiative was helping Canadians
who are now understanding that reconciliation with Indigenous peoples are important.
They wanted to be able to utilize their invested funds in an appropriate way.
So we were providing documents and guidelines and some published materials to really help
the Indigenous and non-Indigenous investors invest in that way.
And we utilized that in the Mississauga's Credit.
We incorporated our values into our portfolio and shared it with our investment managers.
And one of the great things that came out of that was one of our managers for sure said,
you guys opened our eyes to a whole line of questions that we weren't asking the companies
that were in the portfolios we're putting in our clients' investments because we weren't
asking about Indigenous rights.
We weren't asking about free prior and informed consent and how the consultations would be
going with Indigenous communities that impact how these companies operate.
And he said that you guys opened up that line of questioning that now we can ask.
And it's not just for our Indigenous clients.
It's for all of our clients because it's a material risk that we needed to understand
and have the discussion.
So I think if you're going to ask the question of what's the impact of Indigenous investing,
it's being active as shareholders and really using our voice within the corporate sector.
And I think between the two trusts that we have in Mississauga, the Credit, ours is almost
29 million, the other one is about 110 million with a corporate trustee, but they don't do,
as far as I understand, don't do any outright advocacy work like we have.
So I'm really proud that the Mississaugas of the Credit were likely the first Indigenous
shareholder to bring forward an Indigenous shareholder proposal on an Indigenous issue
with Canadian companies that in a couple of the cases didn't even go to a vote.
They just said, please withdraw it.
We'll do it.
And it's the development of reconciliation action plans and Indigenous policy.
And the first one we were part of was the Atkinson Foundation brought forward the TMX
group.
And we were fully in support of that.
And we're able to present at the shareholder meeting to get a 98% approval vote.
That must be really, really rewarding.
Oh, 100%.
And I think it's underrepresented.
And I've been saying at the Toa conferences over the years, we should be embarrassed because
we've been letting non-Indigenous investors with great intention do things for us, but
we should be doing this for ourselves.
How far are we away from having Indigenous investment managers who maybe understand?
That's part of the issue I think we have right now.
Yeah.
The other thing is, well, at this point, we're pretty far away.
One of the qualifications to be an investment manager is generally having a chartered financial
analyst designation, the CFA, internationally renowned standard.
And unfortunately, my understanding, and this is kind of anecdotal, but there's maybe 10
in North America, Indigenous people who hold a CFA.
And I think that's where we really have to do a lot of outreach to the companies and
really try to support our students that are out there.
Right now, there's not a lot of role modeling in that area because they're few and far between.
And the companies that we deal with said, we'd hire an Indigenous CFA in a heartbeat,
but where are they?
And I said, well, right now, they're in high school and university.
It's your job and our job really to help encourage these youth into these positions.
And we really got to show that there's a, one, there's a tremendous need.
And two, you got to learn and understand the industry.
And again, a fear for me is that, yeah, get the designation, get into the role, but the
company is going to show you how it's always been done.
And I think the values that our people bring to the table really need to start getting
through.
And I think the first step is as an investor working with our managers to say, no, no,
we're not that, we're investing with our values, not yours.
And here's how we want it done.
Mark, that was very interesting because we obviously talk a lot about ESG in all the
financial markets around the world.
Some it's more popular focus than others.
But I guess the difference for many people is ESG was a set of guidelines imposed or
suggested to take things forward, managing these different stakeholder groups, whereas
with the indigenous communities, ESG is really just part of the value and how you've always
looked at the world that you live in and the responsibility that you have for the creation
that you're part of.
Yeah.
And we just look at it as sustainability, stewardship, investment stewardship.
We've been stewards of the land for thousands and thousands of years.
And we look at how our invested funds impact on that.
When ESG first came out, all the managers we dealt with always said, oh, don't worry,
we take care of that.
You're part of that.
But we were like a narrow sliver of the social, the S in ESG, where it's environmental, social
and governance.
And we said, no, the eye of indigenous runs through every one of those.
And here's how we see it.
Some of the metrics we look at in the companies that we would prefer to invest in is in the
environmental, what kind of stewardship, what kind of free prior informed consent consultation
do the companies utilize where indigenous people are involved?
In the social, it's definitely the impact on our communities.
And governance is how representative of indigenous peoples is your company?
What's your level of employment?
Do you have lower middle and upper management?
And what about your C suite?
Is that representative of indigenous peoples?
And more and more companies are starting to really come around there.
And we're really trying to make it more of a business decision than any kind of social
exercise because as you guys know, if it's something social, then the next person coming
along may not think it's that important.
But if you really kind of turn it into a business decision to how to work with indigenous peoples,
that really becomes a mechanism of success because a lot of times when we brought forward
the shareholder proposals, it's not, we don't want you to do something nice for us.
We're protecting our money.
We've got invested in your company.
So let's see how we do that in an appropriate way.
Yes.
And you must have seen the landscape shift over the last five to 10 years in this space?
Oh, definitely.
I think, and I will say sadly, especially on the reconciliation portion and where it
pertains to our work, it wasn't until they actually started finding the bodies of the
missing children in Kamloops, British Columbia, that Canadians really took notice.
We'd been saying it for years and we had been advocating in 2016, the report came out and
the calls to action, there's 94 of them.
The big one that we've been utilizing is called Action 92, where it really says to business,
the corporate world, that you play a role in reconciliation, utilize the UN declaration
of the rights of indigenous peoples as a consultation framework, where free prior and informed consent
is a huge component of it.
It's the development of procurement opportunities for indigenous business and education, teaching
and providing opportunities for your workforce to learn about the history of indigenous peoples.
And a lot of companies have gone through that and really made it a priority to educate their
own workforce.
And I think a lot of the biases that had kept indigenous peoples out of the corporate world
were starting to dissipate and people understand that it's not a level playing field.
We know we really have to make sure that outreach and mentorship becomes a very important element
to bring indigenous peoples into the workforce for sure, gain experience to work up through.
When we want somebody in the corporate C-suite, we don't want you to just give us a position
just to show that you have it.
It's got to be earned and it's got to be a qualified individual who sits in there.
And there's lots of us out there that have that.
And I think a lot of companies are starting to recognize that.
It sounds like you're optimistic about the future.
There's definite need.
You mentioned the number of settlements is growing all the time.
There's a need to manage that settlement money properly.
And you're with an organization called Maquate as well.
Will you talk about that?
Sure.
It's sort of that natural evolution for me.
I stepped away and resigned from Natoa back in June of 2024.
And then some colleagues who reached out to me from Maquate, who the founders of Maquate
are JP Gladue and Max Scudra.
Both I had had the opportunity to work with when I was with Natoa and they were CCAB at
the time, now it's CCIB, Canadian Council for Indigenous Business.
And we really had a great relationship.
We did a lot of projects and worked together on a few issues.
And so they reached out to me and said, we'd like to bring you on as a senior advisor and
your specialty obviously is investments and trusts and Indigenous business.
And I thought this was a great opportunity because as a shareholder, we were bringing
forward opportunities for companies to develop called the Reconciliation Action Plan, which
is really just what development of a formalized Indigenous policy and how to work with Indigenous
peoples for the success of the company.
And so Maquate is in that position to be able to be the company that these corporations
can hire to help them develop that Reconciliation Action Plan or Indigenous policy.
We've got, there's about 20, 25 staff now, a lot of very qualified expertise, thought
leaders in different areas of governance and in nuclear power, in hydroelectric, in business
in general.
And I think we have that opportunity to go to companies and really bring that expertise
and help them succeed.
Because as I mentioned earlier, I'd seen some comments from a board of director in a company
we were looking at to work with.
And he said, oh, this is our social responsibility.
It's not a business decision.
And I said, well, as much as I appreciate that sentiment, we really have to change their
mindset to say that it is a business decision.
It's how do you work with Indigenous peoples in all elements of the business to ensure
the success of that business?
And then you really have the ability then to share that vision down the line of the
various departments and levels of management within the company to say, oh, that makes
sense.
This is why we are doing this.
It's not just a nice to do.
We want to work with the corporate world to ensure that we have a place and our place
is very important.
The funny story I always tell about these headphones is that I had to have this particular
set of headphones to do a presentation to the Canadian Senate when Bill C-15 was being
evaluated.
And that's the law in 2022 that says all Canadian law must be in line with the UN Declaration
of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
And as we work through it today, they're still trying to, on a legislative front, trying
to figure out what that actually means.
And so my hope is that a lot of these reconciliation action plans that these companies are starting
to develop can be that roadmap to help the legislation say, do this.
And we're trying to show companies that right now without legislation, this is a competitive
advantage.
You'll get investment from Indigenous investors like us who seek out companies who have made
a commitment to Indigenous peoples and Canadians who are looking for how reconciliation can
play a role in their portfolios.
So a lot of these guides that I've been mentioning are available at rrii.org, the resources pages.
And it's investor guides for Indigenous peoples, non-Indigenous peoples.
We have a legal review on fiduciary duty and Indigenous sustainability.
So it's quite a lot of great information out there that can be helpful.
How do you see the approach of foreign investors has changed over the years when they're coming
in or when there's obviously a subsidiary, some of the major companies have been set
up and how have they taken on this on board and what changes have you seen and expect
to see?
Yeah, I think that the landscape within Canada is changing with some legislative support,
with the opportunities that with these companies developing formalized reconciliation action
plans.
I think foreign investors looking at Canada have that opportunity to participate in that.
I've done some presentations for United Nations in a couple of areas on Indigenous peoples
and investment.
And I think a lot of the world are looking at Canada to say there's an opportunity to
see how Indigenous people play a role in corporate development.
A lot of communities are not, contrary to what I think people would think, are not adverse
to business and partnership.
But I think a very genuine relationship building approach by foreign business with Indigenous
peoples, make the relationship, build the trust, work in partnership is a way of really
getting a lot of business done here in Canada.
I think there's a lot of opportunity.
A lot of communities are very much understanding that they need to develop their departments
and their consultation protocols.
And a community like my wife's community in Cape Breton, the member to First Nation, incredibly
advanced in those areas and the development of business.
And we're able to pull together a deal with other communities within the Nova Scotia area
to buy Clearwater Foods, which is a billion dollar deal that has been very beneficial
for Indigenous business in general and playing a role in the Canadian marketplace.
So I think a lot.
We have examples like that.
And even my community here in Six Nations, developing battery storage projects for renewable
energy is an incredible opportunity.
So I think a lot of Indigenous communities have stepped up and are really looking for
and hoping that those European investors are looking at our marketplace and showing how
it can be done in, Rob, as we say, in a good way.
Working with people with good hearts and good minds, I think, is the way that our ancestors
always viewed it.
Absolutely.
Is there anything we haven't touched on that you'd like us to ask about?
Well, I'm not sure.
I think it's very, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys and hopefully
reach some of the target market you're looking at and European investors coming into Canada.
I know when you guys first established the summit, I kind of looked at it and said, hey,
how about us?
We should be involved in something like that.
But I think the view of how Indigenous investors are actually working in the Canadian marketplace
to really have the rest of the marketplace understand our values.
Believe me, when we presented to the Mississaugas of the Credit Community during one of our
annual meetings and explained that being the smaller trust in the community, we had a greater
impact on the Canadian corporate world by leading proposals with Canadian companies
that advanced Indigenous peoples' rights, title interest, employment, procurement opportunities.
The members were incredibly moved by that opportunity and I really have to thank my
friends at Share for having that platform that we utilize in engagement with these companies.
But yeah, it's important, I think, for an investor to understand that Indigenous people
are actually having quite an impact here and it's not a negative one.
I think generally people would think when they hear Indigenous involvement in the marketplace
is we're disrupting regulatory approvals or blocking roads and stuff like that.
I think that's sort of the mentality that is melting away because we recognize that
we've been settling land claims and we have a lot of allies in the investment world that
are willing and looking forward and looking to us for the direction on Indigenous issues.
So more and more we're stepping up and taking that role on and really trying to show that
it's a good business decision.
Yeah, you said it and that's the reason for the summit and the reason for these podcasts
is to try and change the perception, especially in Europe, about how Indigenous communities
and nations feel about investment and economic development generally.
In Europe, great and shining example of when it's approached in the right way, great things
can be achieved and the demands, the needs for the capital are so great that I think
we do need to look outside of the country for to access some of that.
That's what we're trying to do.
So thank you, Mark Sevester, for being with us again today.
Well, Rob and Mark, I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to staying connected and
seeing where all this goes.
Thank you very much, Mark.
It's been great to have you with us.
Thank you.
Thank you to Mark Sevester for sharing his insights with us.
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Until next time.