Indigenous Awareness

Binnie is embarking on our corporate journey towards Indigenous awareness and reconciliation.

We encourage staff to embark on their own personal journeys towards Indigenous awareness and reconciliation as well as joining our corporate efforts listed below.

We acknowledge that our home office in Burnaby is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish people – Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Tsleil-Waututh & Musqueam First Nations.

As a community, we continue to reflect on the tragic history and ongoing legacy of residential schools, either through personal reflection or alongside the community. Binnie encourages team members to use resources listed on our intranet to reflect and focus on their own journeys towards understanding more about what residential school survivors endured and continue to live through. We honour the memory of those who never made it home, as well as the survivors who endured the loss of language, culture, and their family units at residential schools.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

In the past, Orange Shirt Day events on September 30th served to bring awareness of the history of residential schools, honour and witness the healing journey of the survivors and their families, and show commitment to the ongoing process of reconciliation. A number of events this year, including the confirmation of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools, served as disturbing reminders of systemic racism against Indigenous peoples in Canada.

In 2021, the Canadian Government declared September 30th as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Many Canadians are asking themselves how they can meaningfully contribute to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. As a Canadian company, Binnie is also starting our corporate journey to support reconciliation. We respect that for our Indigenous employees, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation may have a different personal impact. All of our employees are encouraged to choose a path of learning, reflection or action that fits with their personal goals for Truth and Reconciliation.

Awareness Training

As a top employer that strives to be the “people behind your infrastructure” for communities throughout BC and Alberta, we want to ensure that Binnie continues to evolve to meet the expectations of our employees, our clients, and our communities. To start, Binnie has partnered with Nahanee Creative to begin our corporate journey of Indigenous awareness and improve our understanding on topics such as cultural safety, empathy, protocols, and territorial acknowledgements.

Path to Reconciliation

Binnie honours the land we work and live upon, and encourages the practice of land acknowledgements in order to:

Raise awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights in everyday life, for ourselves and meeting participants.

Acknowledge our presence on the land as visitors and as a part of colonial history.
Recognize the history of colonialism and harms done by settlers to Indigenous communities, including acknowledging the detrimental impacts that the engineering profession has had on Indigenous communities through discriminatory practices and disregard for Indigenous rights, traditions and knowledge; where decision-making that directly impacts Indigenous communities has ignored the rights of Indigenous Peoples to be stewards of their own land; where there has been a lack of free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous communities with regards to natural resource projects.
Complement self-reflection and cultural competency of our team.

Top Employer Awards

We are a smart and accomplished organization, but we check our egos at the door. We work hard and work smart, but always find time for check-ins with every level of our team. Our people-focused culture drives us and for this, we are continually recognized as a Top Employer in Canada.