affected by a planned project have the free choice, based on sufficient and timely information, of whether and how a project occurs, according to their systems of customary decision-making (Tomlinson, 2019). FPIC speaks to Indigenous involvement in development before rather than after the fact, meaning that the status quo of consultation ‘done to’ communities simply cannot remain as it is. Indigenous communities are now rightly seeking governance participation in major projects, and there is progress on this front: in resource-rich jurisdictions like Canada, there are over 500 active agreements between companies and Indigenous communities (Bryant & Eagle, 2025b). Recognition and implementation of FPIC is not as simple as adding a procedural step to a mine’s planning process. FPIC is often framed as a contested political and relational norm about Indigenous self-determination and governance (Klein et al., 2023), bringing complex issues into dialogue. It has been established in the literature that dialogue is linked to trust and acceptance between communities and companies (Mercer-Mapstone et al., 2018), both at a conceptual level and applied to communities and projects in Zimbabwe (Gwatidzo & Dumbu, 2025), Central Eastern Europe (Proctor & Maccallum, 2020) and Peru (Garcia-Ortega et al). (Garcia-Ortega et al., 2020). While FPIC is widely recognised in literature as the standard for consent-based engagement (Klein et al., 2023; Owen & Kemp, 2014), the evidence base for how mining companies implement FPIC-aligned dialogue in practice remains limited. The gap is not in aspiration but in process. Allowing sufficient time for true dialogue is also complex because it is perceived to create uncertainty in project and approval timing. Already, greenfield projects take on average 16.3 years from discovery to production, and this number has only been lengthening in the last two decades (DeCoff, 2024). The world needs minerals, but it needs them extracted in a way that is fast, smart and responsible. Conversely, it is well-documented that inadequate social license and stakeholder engagement add complexity to project approvals and cause costly delays (Lèbre et al., 2024), making it important to ‘get engagement right’ the first time. The answer is not creating a more elaborate consultation protocol, but a fundamentally different process design, one that builds trust before the seeds of conflict are sown and positions are hardened. 3. THE TRIANGLE OF TRUST AS GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK The solution this paper offers is the Triangle of Trust, defined as a three-way governance relationship between companies, government, and Indigenous communities as genuine co-owners, to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes from a mining project. This is not a metaphor, but a governance structure with defined roles and accountability. Previous work by Bryant and Eagle in the Canadian Mining Journal establishes elements of this triangle in three stages. 42
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