New data platform aims to reduce conflicts between First Nations and businesses in Canada

When Robert Jago’s brother-in-law, a local politician in Montreal, Canada, shared a photo on Facebook greeting Indigenous leaders, Jago said he immediately knew the leaders as frauds.

“They were kind of a fake meetup band,” said Jago, whose podcast explores the phenomenon of groups pretending to be Indigenous. “People know so little, they get suckered in by fake bands.”

Working in government relations for his own Kwantlen First Nation, Jago himself has encountered a fake band trying to convince local towns they were the only official First Nation in Kwantlen territory — even casting doubt on the authenticity of the Kwantlen themselves.

“People in [the federal] government… didn’t know where to turn, or what information was authoritative,” Jago said. “They didn’t know [much] about First Nations.” He observed the same trend between businesses seeking to launch extractive projects ­— despite having consultants — and Indigenous communities.

It’s one of the reasons why Jago founded KnowledgeKeepr, an Indigenous-led comprehensive data platform on every First Nation in Canada. The platform holds profiles on 638 First Nations across the country, including information on governance structure, chiefs’ contact information, legal records, financial statements, reserve and traditional land boundaries, and other public records.

A goal of the platform, according to its creators, is to reduce conflicts between extractive industries and Indigenous peoples.

In Canada, there are plans underway to expand extractive projects across the country — including with a series of critical mineral mining, clean energy and trade corridors in the Arctic region — which have sparked criticism among conservationists and some Indigenous organizations. Alongside these plans are stated goals to prioritize mutually beneficial partnerships with Indigenous peoples whose lands and lives are impacted.

Conflicts over land use in Indigenous territories can result in Indigenous communities losing out on partnerships, the destruction of culturally important sites, or the criminalization of community members for resistance activities.

To avoid the conflicts that often spring up between businesses and Indigenous communities, access to accurate information is key and at the root of solutions, Jago said. The tool can also simplify consultation processes to demand less of First Nation governments’ administrative resources, saving money and time.

Information, information everywhere

Engaging with a First Nation means not only understanding who holds authority, but also each community’s priorities, history and how they make decisions. These answers are typically scattered among sources of varying credibility.

If questions arise about which communities and chiefs have the authority to make decisions about the construction of a pipeline, for example, seeking answers using Google or Wikipedia often brings up inaccurate or outdated data, Jago said. Even federal databases can be incorrect, and the Indigenous nation’s websites can have sparse information.

“This mess we have to work with is at the root of so many problems between industry, government and First Nations,” Jago said. “So we want to provide authoritative, up-to-date information.”

Jago and his team of six began developing KnowledgeKeepr in 2022, launching a beta version of the platform in June 2025.

KnowledgeKeepr aggregates data from publicly available sources, including provincial registries, court records, band websites, public financial statements and Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) government records. The platform also uses AI to filter the data, and Indigenous experts from each community review all data added to the platform to ensure accuracy.

ISC already has a collection of information that describes individual First Nation communities across Canada, called First Nations Profiles, the government department told Mongabay. “These community profiles were developed by ISC as a means of making the most often requested information readily available,” a spokesperson said.

But the creators of KnowledgeKeepr say their platform dives deeper, with more accurate, up-to-date information. The objective of the tool is to gather information on the structure and governance of all First Nations in Canada, including council members, governance systems, laws, court records, financial data, media reports, band publications, etc. Businesses pay C$250 ($183) a month, while Indigenous peoples access their own nations’ profiles for free.

The integrated platform lets subscribers view comprehensive reports on First Nations, like which authorities to contact to discuss a new mining project, by searching through 11,000 administrative and council member contacts, or profiles of past business partnerships that have been successful.

“There are 400 different governance systems in Canada,” Jago said, and KnowledgeKeepr “describes the governance system in [each] nation, which is kind of critical.” Reports on bylaws, election systems, council composition and term lengths are also available.

“I could see it being a useful platform that could support reconciliation,” Steven Nitah, vice president of First 30×30 Global at Nature for Justice, and former chief of the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation in the Northwest Territories, told Mongabay in an email. “Knowledge of the diversity of [First Nations] in Canada would be beneficial to understanding the diverse approaches and protocols needed to build relationships.”

Jago said he expects the accessible data to be helpful for journalists as well: a lack of verified information resulted in media misrepresentation of clashes between the Wet’suwet’en First Nation and a gas pipeline project, with reports full of contradictory information.

Mapping Indigenous lands in Canada

KnowledgeKeepr is also building a comprehensive map of First Nation territories and boundaries, based on authoritative maps from bands’ governments themselves.

The province of British Columbia alone has more than 200 First Nations. Jago cited a hypothetical scenario: a company planning a road that crosses through four different First Nations’ territories in British Columbia. KnowledgeKeepr maps and profiles might show the company that First Nations A, B and C don’t want such an infrastructure project on their land, and are focused on other priorities — but that Nation D’s chief recently spoke to the media expressing openness to infrastructure development.

With the information currently available online, the business might consult a geographical map and only note the road cuts through First Nation B’s territory. “They’ll [contact] First Nation B and say ‘Hey, we’re going to build this road here, how do I accommodate you?’ and instantly they’re going to have a fight, because that First Nation doesn’t want it,” Jago said. There’s going to be conflict and anger, he added.

“Or you can move the road about 500 meters to the right, and then you’re dealing with Nation D that wants the development,” he went on. With information on the priorities and needs of Nation D available on the platform, negotiating benefit-sharing agreements or partnerships with nations are likely to be more successful, Jago said. “They’ll be there digging it with you … That spells success to me, where the First Nation is actually involved, it’s creating jobs, it’s building the economy.”

The KnowledgeKeepr team says it hopes government officials also take advantage of the platform to access up-to-date information to better engage with First Nations.

“Engagement at the earliest stages of any project is critical and helps set the foundation for meaningful dialogue, understanding and better outcomes,” the Ministry of Indigenous Relations in Alberta province told Mongabay in an email. “Alberta’s government encourages project proponents to engage early and often, particularly with Indigenous communities, to build relationships and identify interests and concerns as projects are being considered.”

When the beta version of KnowledgeKeepr was launched last year, 6,000 users registered right away, Jago said — all government officials.

“Within the first month, we had the prime minister’s office register,” he said. “The people at the top have the same information problem as everybody else.”

Mongabay reached out to the office of Prime Minister Mark Carney about its use of the platform, but didn’t receive a response by the time this story was published.

A tool to ‘benefit First Nations people’

Jago said he expects the platform will be useful for members of First Nations themselves seeking information. During the beta testing period, whenever an election or controversy was occurring in a First Nation, registrations and hits from that nation spiked, he said.

“My hope is that we will see that through other elections and other events [going] forward, where band members will go and they’ll see how their nation is actually doing compared to other nations, and that will influence the decisions they make and result in better government of First Nations … a more peaceful system, a more accountable system,” Jago said.

Nitah said that First Nations often face issues communicating with other First Nations when faced with development projects. Businesses and government officials may align to push for development in Indigenous peoples’ territory, playing Indigenous governments in the area against each other to achieve sufficient support to move forward, he said, often at the expense of the most directly impacted community.

“This platform could help create connections between Indigenous governments to share knowledge,” Nitah said.

Jago said he’s conscious of data privacy concerns around the use of the platform. “Every piece of data that we have here is publicly available, it’s just scattered between thousands of different sources that are sometimes hard to find,” he said.

But sensitive cultural data, like traditional hereditary governance structures, are not included, to avoid violating Indigenous intellectual property ownership and consent. “We only touch these pieces of data that relate to the band itself and its business entities,” Jago said.

The latest version of KnowledgeKeepr will be released on May 22, with the enterprise version following in October. After compiling and verifying all the information on First Nations, KnowledgeKeepr is aiming to include data on Métis and Inuit groups, Jago said, which will likely be completed next year.

The central goal is for the tool to benefit First Nations, he said.

“I’m a very activist member of my First Nation and other First Nations,” Jago said. “I want this to be a tool for First Nations people first and foremost.”

Banner image: First Nations elders watch the Canada Day festivities in Calgary, Alberta, 2022. Image by Dwayne Reilander via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Latoya Abulu Editor

This story first appeared on Mongabay

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