Secwepemc communities in B.C. have state-of-the-art land-use management systems designed by First Nations for their own use. Chief Judy Wilson, Neskonlith Indian Band, learned about information management at the En’owkin Centre in the 1980s. En’owkin is a First Nations advanced learning arts and publishing institute in the Okanagan Nation.
"I have a librarian background," said Wilson, "I first learned about archives and how to store and retrieve research material." Later Wilson worked with Chief Atahm School to create a digital Secwepemc language and culture centre on Little Shuswap Lake operated by Adams Lake Indian Band. Chief Atham School is western Canada’s only First Nation language immersion school.
These avenues of experience exposed Wilson to different systems and processes and ensuing projects with archivist Leona Lampreau led to an advanced career in archives management specifically designed around policy development. By that pathway Wilson came to apply information management to First Nation land use management.
"I come from a land claims background within my family," she said, and learned important lessons from people like Jeanne Joseph, a Haida/Nisga'a woman who teaches information access and retrieval systems to bands for territorial claims. "Jeanne Joseph works with a lot of different data collections."
Neskonlith Indian Band, Adams Lake Indian Band, and Little Shuswap Indian Band own a collective history and share knowledge streams about land use within their traditional territory. To manage this knowledge is the purpose of entering high end media, growing the capacity to answer data demands. "Replies to Crown referrals can be delivered immediately."
She notes, "Court decisions in northwest B.C. place the burden to directly on First Nations respond to Crown oriented land use referrals, "that are slapped together with mis-coordinated maps and no standards of reference to the maze of contents." It takes a Rosetta Stone to interpret or understand the Crown's referral demands.
Worse, the priority of reports includes no reference to First Nations; neither their importance nor depth of concern about their land issues is referenced. The level of Aboriginal interest must come from First Nations. Yet financing is non-existent for First Nations to respond to Crown referrals for land use and very few industry or government agencies are willing to provide referral payments to First Nations.
Wilson partnered with D.R. Systems Inc to design, "an automated Referral Tracking System (RTS) which has been distributed via workshops at regional communities," she said, "The intent is to provide an forestry/land use management process, then we are adding capacity for multiple levels of response to Crown referrals."
Neskonlith Indian Band and Adams Lake Indian Band and D.R. Systems Inc have put the RTS on the market to enable First Nation communities responding to land use referrals, and dozens of Bands are using it around the province. Wilson said, "We outsource RTS software under license to First Nations depending on their own level of land-use management concerns, from Band office, to tribal council, to nation."
Wilson notes Secwepemc communities are, "innovators and leaders in many areas and a key concern for many Bands is land use management within their traditional territories." She said, "It really works because our land use planning focuses on community growth," and continuous reflection upon stewardship, "as the ancestors expect. We have the ability to monitor project encroachment in the nation down to the effects on a particular stand of trees."
"It is software that will also provide a wide array of other service to community especially basic services like health, water management, emergency call centres etc," she said. A Comprehensive Community Planning Process is part what the communities are undertaking. The software is timely for this process and it will assist in making strategies to reconstitute stewardship of traditional territories.
"We know where we feel at home, in connection with the land and water that has been our identity. We keep turning to the Elders for teaching. We don't have the land base we used to, and it cut us off from spiritual from knowing our territory." The software fits the Tools for Success program offered by INAC and StatsCan.
"In future territorial demands upon data will add to the capacity for First Nation governance. We seek enhancement of stewardship over natural resources, our own health, and the technical capacity to stay in our roles as stewards of these lands."
