THESIS GOLD INC.
A new model for First Nations partnerships The Lawyers-Ranch project sits within the traditional territories of several First Nations communities. Under Canadian law, resource developers are required to consult meaningfully with Indigenous peoples whose rights and interests may be affected by a proposed development. Thesis has been working on those relationships for eight years, well before the environmental assessment process began.
In that time, the company has signed agreements with several communities and is having discussions with others. In developing its partnership model, Thesis is drawing on the concept of two-eyed seeing – an approach increasingly applied in Canadian resource development that involves integrating Indigenous knowledge systems alongside Western scientific perspectives when assessing the implications of proposed projects.
Shared economic participation will also be a cornerstone of the Company’ s approach to project development. For Stephen, the development model where a company rolls in, builds a mine and imports the majority of its workforce and supply chain from elsewhere is simply no longer viable.
“ That approach exports the bulk of the economic activity outside the region,” he says.“ That’ s not an attractive model for local communities, and it’ s not a sustainable model.”
2028
expected completion of the full environmental assessment
2029
Thesis’ target construction start date
Thesis’ intention is to involve host communities in the physical delivery of the project where possible. The mine will require a camp, an airstrip, a processing mill and various other infrastructure. Stephen hopes that the local communities will get involved with this work.“ If we do this well, it can help foster really deep economic participation for the Nations on this project,” he says,“ and that is exactly what we’ re going to try to do.”
The open source mining philosophy feeds into these partnerships too. The goal is to give host communities access to the same performance data that management and investors use to track the project.“ We want to advance on our proposed project in as open and transparent a manner as possible,” Stephen says.“ The core of what that openness and transparency is intended to yield is accountability.”
14 July 2026