25th Anniversary – Lands Advisory Board

As the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management enters its 25^th year of supporting First Nation land governance, we believe it is important to recognize and share the origins of how it came to be.

Near the end of the 1980’s, a national group of dedicated Chiefs, studying the effectiveness of the Indian Act, concluded that:

The Indian Act did not provide an adequate statutory basis for First Nations to govern their Reserve lands and natural resources, and
There needed to be recognition and legal capacity for First Nations to exercise their inherent rights to govern their reserve lands and natural resources.

In the early 1990s, these same Chiefs began to focus on the concept of a government-to-government arrangement with Canada which would recognize these inherent rights. The culmination of the work was the creation of the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management (Framework Agreement).