Telling stories, creating relationships

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/08/2024 (381 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Describing what the team at Narratives does takes more than a few snappy sentences.

“I have said in the past that we struggle with our elevator pitch — and that’s sort of our elevator pitch,” says Conor Smith, senior partner and senior planner.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, the environmental consulting firm offers a variety of services. The company works to create spaces where clients can share their stories and engage in respectful dialogue so they can make informed decisions that align with their values.

Founder and principal partner Somia Sadiq wanted a name that captures the way people recount and make sense of past events. “Stories” was taken, so she chose Narratives instead.

“The work is rooted in bringing different perspectives — often contradictory perspectives — together in a meaningful way,” she says. “If we take our time, if we really focus on the stories of different parties, then we’re bound to have a better process than you would otherwise.”

Recent work includes supporting Chemawawin Cree Nation as it works with Manitoba Hydro and the province of Manitoba to assert its rights and jurisdiction within its traditional territory. The First Nation was displaced in the 1960s by the creation of the Grand Rapids generating station.

The company is working with Grand Council Treaty #3, a political organization representing 24 First Nations communities across Treaty 3 areas of Northern Ontario and southeastern Manitoba, as it develops signage welcoming visitors and highlighting ancestral teachings.

Narratives is also supporting survivors of a former residential school near Kenora, Ont., as they document the institution’s history, search for unmarked graves and work toward healing.

To accomplish its work, Narratives brings together five departments, or as staff refer to them, “communities of practice”: dialogue and transformation; place and community; expression and connection; people and culture; and insight and discovery.

These communities include experts in impact assessment, conflict transformation, land-use planning, landscape architecture, geographic information systems, graphic design, videography, marketing, web design, human resources, logistics, research and data analysis.

“We won’t just have impact assessment folks at the table,” says partner and senior landscape designer Desirée Thériault.

“We’ll try to bring a little bit of everybody from all of those different communities of practice to the table so we can look at things from a holistic lens and bring diversity and representation, and provide innovation to those projects that we’re working within.”

Narratives employs more than 50 people, which is quite a difference from its start as a one-person operation.

With her background in impact assessment, community engagement and conflict transformation, Sadiq worked in several leadership positions managing teams of planners and engineers.

She often found herself sitting across the table from Indigenous people who were fighting to be acknowledged and heard. Many times, the process and bureaucracy involved during those discussions frustrated her.

“The work is rooted in bringing different perspectives — often contradictory perspectives — together in a meaningful way. If we take our time, if we really focus on the stories of different parties, then we’re bound to have a better process than you would otherwise.”–Somia Sadiq

In 2017, Sadiq realized she had the tools and understanding to do things differently. She founded Narratives to amplify voices that may otherwise go unheard or unaddressed — especially those from racialized communities disproportionately impacted by environmental decisions they’ve historically been excluded from.

Drawing from her family’s experience during the partition of India and Pakistan in the 1940s, the Gulf War in the 1990s, and her own experience as a newcomer to Canada in the early 2000s, Sadiq sought to push the boundaries of what is possible in research, policy, planning and practice.

The company’s work is guided by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, is trauma-informed and values the lived experiences of everyone involved.

It is also inspired by the principles of storywork: respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness and synergy.

Sadiq learned the power of stories at an early age.

“Everything was a story,” she says. “All of our lessons, how we learned to cook and navigate life — it all came through lots of stories and allegories and folk legends and songs.”

When Sadiq was growing up in the Pakistani city of Lahore, people in her community experiencing conflict came to the courtyard of her family’s home seeking the wisdom of her grandfather, Miyaan’ji.

Sadiq recalls one incident when she was around 10: a family’s water buffalo had been stolen and the victims met with the family accused of committing the crime.

Over the course of a few days, the families involved and their supporters told stories detailing their views of the conflict and how it had impacted them. Eventually, Miyaan’ji guided the discussion to a resolution everyone could live with.

“Through conversation, through dialogue over food over many, many days, it was this really powerful way to transform conflict,” Sadiq says. “People knew that next time they’re in conflict doesn’t mean they have to be at war with each other — it means they can come to the family house and think things through.”

Sadiq carries those memories of the power of stories and dialogue into her work today.

“Whenever I’m working with communities, working with elders, in a lot of ways they remind me of my grandparents and the lessons that I’ve learned from them,” she says.

“All of our lessons, how we learned to cook and navigate life — it all came through lots of stories and allegories and folk legends and songs.”–Somia Sadiq

Narratives has grown because of Sadiq’s desire to bring aboard professionals who can help the company best do its work and through recommendations from previous clients.

If an Indigenous leader recommends Narratives to another Indigenous organization, it’s difficult to turn down that work because the company doesn’t want to disappoint the people seeking assistance nor the people who trusted them enough to make the recommendation.

“It’s been very important just for the relationships that we have to be able to meet that call to action,” Smith says.

Along the way, the company has picked up numerous honours, including a 2020 ECO Impact award recognizing innovation in the environmental field and a Spirit of Winnipeg award for workplace culture.

Women Business Owners of Manitoba presented Sadiq with its Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award last year, and Narratives staffers were in Dublin in April to receive the Corporate Initiative Award from the International Association for Impact Assessment.

The company’s goal moving forward is to keep meeting the needs of the people who seek its services.

Sadiq says the company will head in the right direction so long as staffers remember the reason for their work — to walk alongside the communities that seek its assistance.

“I’m just so fortunate to be working with such an incredible team,” Sadiq says. “It’s just really exciting to be a part of it.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca