Lands and Waters: Tools, Systems, and Data

Nations across BC are exercising decision-making and governance authority over lands and waters, preserving cultural use and heritage, and responding to resource referrals. Each of these functions depends on the same thing: timely access to land and resource data and information that is organized, accessible, and ready to use when decisions need to be made.

This issue of our monthly newsletter looks at tools, systems, and data that support Nations to make decisions about lands and waters, and profiles three Nation-led demonstration projects: the Council of the Haida Nation, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, and Sq’éwqel (Seabird Island Band).

Resource Highlight: Building the Financial Case for Land Conservation

Developed with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation through a BC RIGC demonstration project, the Costing Tool is an Excel-based financial model for estimating costs and testing scenarios across a broad scope of conservation planning, including existing stewardship operations, guardian program expansion, and infrastructure development. Standard financial planning tools were designed for public agencies and do not account for remote infrastructure, multi-generational governance commitments, or the cost structures of Nation-led stewardship programs.

Any Nation can substitute their own operational data, adjust infrastructure components to match their territory, and run their own funding scenarios. The accompanying Companion document documents every assumption so it can be examined and adapted. Both tools are available for free.

What is an IPCA?

An Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) is a land or water area where a First Nation has the primary role in protecting and conserving the land through Indigenous laws, governance, and knowledge systems. Some IPCAs are established by a Nation under its own authority, while others are created collaboratively with federal, provincial, or territorial governments through intergovernmental agreements that layer Crown protection alongside the Nation's. IPCA development often spans years or decades and can involve guardian programs, infrastructure, and cross-government partnerships.

Build Your Own Data Centre

What’s New in the BYODC

Surveys in the Build Your Own Data Centre (BYODC) are becoming a complete authoring experience. The survey builder now opens to a task-first landing page and offers reusable starter questionnaires, clearer draft steps, a redesigned details page, and a more direct questionnaire workflow. Question authoring has changed alongside it: authors can now see respondent-style previews and build grid-style Matrix and Likert questions directly in the format respondents will see, all within consistent layouts. They can also browse shared questions, and rely on validation that saves time by finding and focusing on errors before a questionnaire is finished.

Together, these updates mean authors can start from a useful structure, understand what they are building, and correct problems before they reach respondents.

New Feature: Family Trees

Family relationships determine membership decisions, service delivery, and governance rights. The BYODC now includes tools to map those connections and manage them alongside citizenship and governance records. Nations already using the BYODC’s Citizenship and Membership Records tool can now add family trees.

If your Nation is not yet using the platform, contact the BC RIGC team to get started.

Our Work in Action

Demonstration Project Highlight:
Building the Foundation for Land Governance with the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN)

The Council of the Haida Nation’s Land Stewardship department holds decades of environmental monitoring data, land use planning records, and negotiation documentation. That knowledge underpins the Nation’s governance of Haida Gwaii and implementation of the Gaayhllxid • Gîhlagalgang “Rising Tide” Haida Title Lands Agreement.

Files were distributed across individual OneDrives with inconsistent naming, and access didn’t transfer reliably during staff transitions. As CHN’s governance responsibilities expanded under Rising Tide, the Nation built the centralized archive systems those responsibilities require.

“If a mining company comes to us and says, ‘We want to put a claim here’, we can say, ‘No, you can’t, because it’s a village site, because there are endangered species that live there, because it’s too close to a fish-bearing stream, you’re going to impact our drinking water.’ That gives us the strength that we need to oppose those types of applications, and gives our decision-makers the information they need to make informed decisions.”

— Kung K̲’ayangas Marlene Liddle,
Director, Land Stewardship,
Council of the Haida Nation

Between 2024 and 2026, CHN worked with the BC RIGC to build that infrastructure. The project produced a Data Archive Policy and 14 Standard Operating Guidelines governing how data is stored, accessed, labelled, shared, and protected. CHN’s Data Archive Policy and all 14 SOGs are available as templates. Contact the BC RIGC team if you are interested in accessing the templates.

Demonstration Project Highlight:
Mapping the Land Base with Sq’éwqel

Sq'éwqel (Seabird Island Band) set out to map their own land, all 4,000 acres of it. A Stó:lō and Nlaka'pamux community along the Fraser River, Seabird Island serves over 1,000 residents and provides health, housing, education, and infrastructure services to surrounding Nations as well.

Through a BC RIGC demonstration project, they commissioned aerial photography of the entire island and produced a professional-grade orthomap alongside Digital Surface, Terrain, and Elevation models, forming the foundation for a community-owned Geodatabase that puts land knowledge back in the hands of the Nation. The result is an accurate, current picture of the Nation’s full territory, owned and controlled by Seabird Island and hosted on the community’s own GIS Portal.

“This project will contribute to the continued development of First Nations data sovereignty by ensuring that data collection, interpretation, and use are guided by distinct values, protocols, and self-defined priorities. For Seabird Island, it will enhance our capacity to define success on our own terms.”

— Amir Zeb, GIS Lead, Seabird Island Band

The orthomap and elevation models form the base layer from which features like roads, buildings, land parcels, fire hydrants, water wells, and agricultural land reserves can be digitized into a structured Geodatabase. That work is ongoing.

In May 2026, Seabird Island uploaded their orthomap directly into the Build Your Own Data Centre, putting it to work beyond their own GIS Portal. The data was used to test and refine a new custom geography application in the BYODC, making it possible for Nations to store spatial datasets alongside their governance records, citizenship data, and other Nation-held information in one place. 

Previously, the BYODC used Statistics Canada's standard geographies as the basis for data analysis. Now, Nations can upload their own geographic data, or hand-draw their own boundaries, and use those as the foundation instead. Those boundaries become available across the entire platform. Users can automatically determine whether members live inside or outside the community, build custom map layers, and apply the boundaries as a filter in any data visualization or analysis tool in the BYODC. For Nations whose territories don't align with how Statistics Canada draws its lines, which is many of them, this changes what the platform can do for them.

Shared Strengths, Shared Needs:
Insights from the BC First Nations’ Data Capacity Assessment

The BC RIGC Data Governance Assessment is a structured, evidence-based tool that evaluates data and digital governance capacity across five domains: people and partnerships, data use, tools and IT systems, organizational culture, and data governance. For individual Nations, it maps current strengths and gaps and supports planning for data capacity development.

Once the Assessment is completed, users receive a summary of results and recommended priority areas. These results feed directly into the platform’s Action Planning tool, which helps Nations develop a structured plan tailored to their governance context. Whether a Nation has a project in mind, one already underway, or is unsure where to start, the Assessment connects directly to relevant templates, guidance materials, and tools within the resource library and can also support funding proposal development.

To date, 58 Nations have taken the Assessment, more than one in four First Nations in BC. By examining the aggregated results, the BC RIGC has identified patterns that hold consistently across the province. First Nations governments are collecting data, staffing dedicated data roles, working with partner organizations, and exercising their rights over their own information. Organizational culture and governance readiness are strong. Gaps tend to emerge in systems: the tools, IT infrastructure, and data governance policies that translate that readiness into operational capacity. Data systems in First Nations governments have been chronically underfunded as a result of colonial policies that excluded Nations from public infrastructure investment.

In a new blog series, Reflections from Working with Nations, the BC RIGC draws on those 58 assessments to share what is being learned alongside Nations. The first post maps where Nations are already strong and where the gaps tend to fall in data systems, governance policies, and infrastructure.

Training & Ecosystem Opportunities

Digital Skills Training
Check out career-ready digital skills training courses offered at no cost to Indigenous peoples aged 18-35, living in BC, delivered online by the First Nations Technology Council.
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BC First Nations Public Service Secretariat
Free skills training for governance.
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FNPSS is currently recruiting for a Manager of Finance and Corporate Services — a senior leadership role responsible for overseeing our financial services, corporate services, human resources, records and information management, and information technology functions. This position is open until filled.
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OCAP® (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession)
Learn the Fundamentals of OCAP® with the First Nations Information Governance Centre.
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Indigenous Data Initiatives Zoom Circles

The BC government’s Indigenous Data Initiatives (IDI) team hosts monthly Zoom Circles on Indigenous data work under the Anti-Racism Data Act, covering updates, discussion, and cross-organization learning.

To join, contact: Deborah Grauer at deborah.grauer@gov.bc.ca or (250) 883-4404, or Karla Helgason at karla.helgason@gov.bc.ca