Niilo Edwards was a quiet force in the movement to improve economic opportunities for Canada’s Indigenous people.Adam Blasberg
Niilo Edwards was a quiet force in the movement to improve economic opportunities for Canada’s Indigenous people, but he wasn’t shy about celebrating victories. For Mr. Edwards, that often meant blasting Bruce Springsteen’s Pink Cadillac.
It became a ritual for the co-founder of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition and his close friend and colleague Mark Podlasly. The tune’s lyrics – “Riding in the back; Cruising down the street; Waving to the girls; Feeling out of sight” – signified the genuine excitement they shared about their progress.
“We’d play it as sort of our celebration song, when we’d land a big speaker for a conference or get a policy win or push something across the line,” he says. “It was like, ‘We’re building a Pink Cadillac!’ We’d just play it. It was sort of our theme song, him and I.”
That playfulness belies the significance of their achievements on behalf of Indigenous nations across the country. Mr. Edwards, who died on Dec. 16 at age 37 of complications from a kidney transplant, is widely recognized as a key ally to First Nations, Métis and Inuit people.
Non-Indigenous, he worked to bring together chiefs, community leaders, corporate executives and government officials to negotiate new business arrangements aimed at giving Indigenous communities more control over their financial well-being and environment.
He won the trust of Indigenous leaders by taking the time necessary to listen to their stories and hopes for lifting their people from often distressing social conditions, say those close to him.
Through the not-for-profit FNMPC, Mr. Edwards and his compatriots have pushed for First Nations ownership interests in pipelines, critical minerals mines, clean energy and infrastructure projects. The group has grown from 11 member nations in British Columbia when it was founded eight years ago to more than 170 members across the country today.
“It is unusual in many cases that you have a non-Indigenous person accepted so much by Indigenous communities. It was because his heart was in the right place. He knew what they were trying to do and he was helping them get there,” says Mr. Podlasly, a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation in British Columbia.
He was known to hang in the back of meeting rooms during tough discussions, but chiefs glanced at him often, studying his body language to gauge what he was thinking.
Mr. Edwards was instrumental in securing from Ottawa a $5-billion loan guarantee for Indigenous investments, seen as a catalyst for transforming how industrial projects across First Nation territories are funded and controlled in Canada.
“It’s a game changer in terms of filling a financing gap for Indigenous participation as equity owners in major projects across the country – and will empower free, prior and informed business decisions to take shape,” he told The Globe and Mail last April.
He tended to deflect the spotlight to others, but he still amassed accolades. In October, Mr. Edwards won international acclaim, being named by Time Magazine as one of its Time100 Climate honorees for 2024. By then, he had been admitted to Vancouver General Hospital, where he spent most of the rest of his time receiving treatment.
Niilo McCloud Riksman Edwards learned the importance of creating opportunity early. He was born in Alert Bay off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island and raised in nearby Sointula, a fishing village on Malcolm Island established by Finnish immigrants in the 19th century. Growing up in a family of modest means, he was enterprising, establishing a lawn care company while in high school, and helping his father cut and sell cedar shakes.
“There are a lot of parallels between life on reserve and where he grew up. There were few economic activities, few opportunities for education or thinking you could step outside your community,” said Rachael Durie, Mr. Edwards’s wife of 16 years.
After high school, he studied public administration at the University of Ottawa while working as a constituency adviser on Parliament Hill. There, in 2006, he signed on as executive assistant to Senator Gerry St. Germain, a Métis leader who was chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. Chiefs who spoke at committee hearings lamented the economic disparities that have long plagued First Nations.
The Indian Act, under which the Crown has held First Nations assets in trust, was a major roadblock to their prosperity. Corporations, meanwhile, often saw Indigenous people as obstacles as they proposed major developments on their territories, offering little beyond job opportunities and payments.
In 2012, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Durie returned to B.C., where he worked for Harold Calla, executive chair of the First Nations Financial Management Board, a non-profit established to allow nations to borrow money at rates afforded other Canadian governments.
“Again, they were seeing all these missing pieces. Between Gerry and Harold, Niilo was able to learn and see the gaps. They had lots of great conversations and went out and did the work,” Ms. Durie says.
Those efforts helped spark the idea for the FNMPC in 2015, starting with discussions involving B.C. leaders, one of whom was Sharleen Gale, then chief of Fort Nelson First Nation. At the time, she says, she felt isolated and pressured when faced with development proposals. She quickly felt a kinship with Mr. Edwards.
“As a young chief I was pushed with having to make a decision when big corporations came to my territory, and as Indigenous people we were just going to be left behind and left with beads and trinkets,” Ms. Gale says.
“When I attended meetings in Prince George with the First Nations Major Project Coalition, which was not even formed as a society, they were bringing communities together, and he would talk at roundtables about the possibilities of economic prosperity and environmental stewardship and how we do it together,” she says.
At its core, it involves moving from a lopsided system of land access agreements with energy and mining companies to build on traditional territory, to negotiating for ownership interests and a say in how projects are run. That not only can provide short-term economic benefits, but revenues that can be reinvested in other opportunities.
Ms. Gale was so taken with the concept and Mr. Edwards, that she joined the coalition’s board in 2017 and is now its executive chair. The group’s growing influence is akin to “launching like a rocket into outer space, and nobody can stop us now,” she told him.
To date, FNMPC has been involved in 18 industrial developments, representing capital costs of more than $45-billion. Its conferences are the premier forums for discussing pressing economic issues that affect First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.
Under his stewardship, the group has also swayed corporate leaders to the view that partnerships are beneficial to the long-term health of their corporations, too, says J.P. Gladu, an Indigenous business leader and friend and confidant to Mr. Edwards.
“There are actually progressive business leaders who are looking to achieve the same things that we want – a healthy environment, a healthy economy, a place for future generations. And we’re able to support business development in a way that corporations and governments could relate to and support,” says Mr. Gladu, a member Sand Point First Nation in northwestern Ontario.
As it turned out, he had little time to accomplish all he wanted to. He suffered a serious setback in 2018 in the form of kidney failure, and required a transplant. Ms. Durie, who had been with him since their university days, came to the rescue as his donor.
As a transplant recipient, he required daily doses of immunosuppressants so his system would not reject the organ. That necessitated monthly blood tests. Between September and October this year, his results took a negative turn. He was diagnosed with post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, a cancer brought on by the heavy medication. That proved to be the hurdle he could not clear.
For Ms. Durie, his successes are testimony to the power of his deep understanding and persistence. “He just kept showing up because he truly believed that there were opportunities here and he was willing to do the grunt work.”
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