Frog Lake First Nation and Economic Development: A Case Study

For many Indigenous societies, ‘rebuilding’ means adapting to the modern ways of capitalism. While a significant and disturbing number of First Nations continue to be subjected to intractable penury, incomparable levels of unemployment, and welfare dependency in contemporary Canada, there are some First Nations who have become, and continue to be, economically successful through business development. In many ways, capitalism has become the ‘new buffalo’ for many First Nations in Canada. Although the participation of First Nations in the global capitalist economy as a way to improve their socioeconomic circumstances have been the focused of many academic, state, and independent conceptual studies, few have yet to contribute to the understanding of the nascent discipline of Aboriginal Economic Development (AED) through empirical research within Canadian First Nations contexts. This case study attempts to fill this gap. Using Frog Lake First Nation (FLFN) as an instrumental case study, this thesis explores the ways in which FLFN’s economic arm—Frog Lake Energy Resources Corporation (FLERC)—employs the joint venture model to promote, create, and sustain economic development with the aim of generating substantial wealth, creating jobs as well as other economic benefits for its community members and non-members alike. It also identifies a set of factors that contribute to the economic success of FLFN. Furthermore, it employs the Harvard Project’s Nation-Building Model (NBM) as its theoretical framework, where each of the NBM elements is applied to ascertain its theoretical applicability within the context of the successful economic development of FLFN