Indigenous peoples, environmental accountability and the semantic meaning of resource extraction firm disclosures

Abstract

Purpose The study aims to explore how Indigenous peoples and their concerns become “entextualized” within the environmental disclosures of resource extraction firms. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-methods content analysis of 11,850 annual information forms filed by resource extraction firms with Canadian security regulators between 1997 and 2023 is conducted. FinBERT transformer encodings, agglomerative hierarchical clustering and computer-assisted techniques are combined with inductive analyses. Findings The findings show that, although Indigenous peoples and their concerns have become a more important element in environmental disclosures, dominant semantic meanings tend to view Indigenous people as impediments. At the same time, the entextualizations of Indigenous peoples and their concerns sometimes escape these dominant frames. Big firms appear to be no more likely to exhibit leadership or substantively take Indigenous peoples and their concerns into account than smaller firms. Originality/value The study offers a longitudinal perspective on how the environment and Indigenous peoples are portrayed in corporate disclosures. The study emphasizes the need to view environmental accountability as inextricably intertwined with accountability to Indigenous peoples and also illustrates the importance of identifying the semantic meanings that are being communicated. We propose that analyzing how and why specific semantic meanings about Indigenous peoples and their concerns become entextualized provides activists and policy-makers with a starting point for improved disclosure practices and, hopefully, better resource extraction practices.