When the System Wasn’t Built to Work for You, You Build One That Does

How OneFeather is helping First Nations dismantle colonial barriers, one solution at a time.

“If you’re not getting the service you need as an Indigenous person, make it yourself.” — George Oscar Lewis, We Wai Kai Nation, grandfather of OneFeather Founder and CEO Lawrence Lewis

This article is about First Nations peoples specifically. First Nations, Métis, and Inuit are distinct peoples with distinct histories, rights, and relationships to the Canadian state, and “Indigenous” is not a single experience. The barriers described here flow from one specific piece of legislation, the Indian Act, and from the system of registered status it created. That system applies to First Nations, which is why this piece keeps its focus there.

For generations, First Nations peoples have been forced to live under systems that were never designed for them, never designed with them, and in many cases were designed to work against them.

The Indian Act of 1876 was never simply a governance framework. The authority behind it was never granted by First Nations. The Crown asserted the power to legislate over peoples who had governed themselves since time immemorial, and the Indian Act is what that asserted power produced. It is an instrument of assimilation and oppression, and much of it remains in force today. It banned ceremonies and spiritual practices. It controlled movement through the pass system. It prohibited First Nations peoples from hiring lawyers to pursue land claims. It stripped women of their status when they married non-status men.

It also gave the federal government the power to forcibly terminate the status of individuals, through a process called enfranchisement, and to remove people from band membership. These specific powers were repealed in 1985, but only after sustained legal challenges, international pressure, and decades of advocacy led largely by First Nations women. Their effects are still being felt, and the government continues to legislate today to address the inequities they created. 

But the deeper harm runs beneath any single provision. The "band" itself was an imposition: an administrative and governmental unit the Indian Act laid over communities that had governed themselves, and decided their own belonging, since time immemorial. The right to say who belongs to a nation has always rested with that nation, and it was never the Crown's to take. What the Indian Act did was make the Crown's recognition the gate a person had to pass through to reach the rights and benefits the treaties had already promised them. For an individual, losing status did not change who they were to their nation; belonging was never in question. It cut off what an authority, that never held that power, had decided to make conditional on its approval.

The Indian Act is the legislative backbone beneath much of the harm done to First Nations peoples, residential schools among the gravest, and its logic has not ended.

That legacy is not confined to history. It lives in paperwork. It lives in systems that remain deliberately difficult to navigate. It lives in the everyday experience of First Nations peoples trying to access rights that were promised, negotiated as treaty, rights the Crown agreed to as one party to an agreement, not benefits it was ever free to grant or withhold. 

The Challenge: A Status Card Is Not Just Identification

For First Nations peoples who hold registered status, the status card carries enormous weight, not because it was ever asked for, but because the government made it the proof a person needs to access what is theirs. It is supposed to carry the same weight as a passport or permanent resident card, recognized by any business, agency, or border official. In practice, it often isn't: many frontline staff don't recognize a status card, and First Nations people are still treated with suspicion, or worse, when they present the very document the government issued them.

The card is proof of a legally and constitutionally recognized identity. Registration under the Indian Act is what carries a specific set of rights and entitlements: certain health benefits, tax exemptions, the right to cross the Canada–U.S. border at land and marine ports of entry, access to post-secondary education funding, on-reserve housing and property rights, the right to participate in band governance and elections, and a range of federal programs and services.

These are not benefits extended as a courtesy. They are rights that flow from a legal and treaty relationship with the Crown, honoured not only by the federal government but by the many institutions across Canada.

And yet renewing or replacing this document has never been straightforward. It has often been an arduous process that should be as simple as renewing a passport.

Even getting the renewal process started has been a barrier. Applicants have had to track down and print lengthy paper forms, which assumes reliable internet and a printer at home. From there, the process means travelling to a government or band office, sourcing and paying for a passport-style photo, and mailing everything in, then waiting. The government estimates the process takes 8 to 12 weeks, though that estimate has been widely criticized as inaccurate, and many applicants have waited far longer. Some have waited over a year. Others have had applications returned as incomplete, with no clear explanation, forcing them to start over.

These are not bureaucratic accidents. In 2023, The Globe and Mail obtained internal government memos that acknowledged the dysfunction, and went further, suggesting the complexity may be intentional:

“The federal government has internally acknowledged that it created a complicated and lengthy process to apply for Indian status, and is at risk of “media scrutiny” over that system – the gateway for First Nations people to access their rights.” — Government of Canada internal memo, as reported by The Globe and Mail

A system that requires an external organization to exist before rights holders can successfully access their own rights is not failing by accident. It reflects the same colonial logic the Indian Act is built on.

The Response: Building What Should Have Already Existed

George Oscar Lewis’ wisdom was not offered as a workaround, but as a principle of self-determination: when the systems built by others, without them, fail First Nations peoples, First Nations peoples should build better ones.

His grandson Lawrence Lewis, Founder and CEO of OneFeather and a member of We Wai Kai Nation, carried that principle forward. When community members described their experiences with the status card process — applications returned, months without answers, the weight of navigating a system designed to be difficult — Lewis did not wait for the government to fix it. In 2021, OneFeather built and launched Canada’s first online status card renewal and replacement service.

The online service replaces the paper forms and mailing with a guided digital application members can complete from home, often in under an hour, with prompts that walk them through the most common points of confusion. Members are no longer left mailing documents into silence; they receive confirmation once their application is on its way to Indigenous Services Canada.

Before it gets there, every application is reviewed by the people at OneFeather, who many themselves have experienced the cumbersome renewal process firsthand. Under the old paper process, a single error could go unnoticed until the application came back rejected, often months later and with little explanation, leaving the person to start over. OneFeather closes that gap: the review flags anything missing or incorrect so it can be fixed up front, before submission rather than after a rejection. The result is a consistent 98% application approval rate, a number that reflects not how hard the application is, but the quality of the support built around it.

This is what it looks like when technology is built to dismantle a colonial barrier rather than accommodate it. The status card itself is a product of colonization, and it is not going away. What can change is the experience of accessing it. A First Nations person renewing a status card should be able to expect the same standard of service anyone in Canada expects when renewing a passport. That is what equality looks like translated into practice: not a special accommodation, but the level of service that should have existed all along.

The Challenge: Democratic Participation Is a Sovereign Right

The same barriers that make accessing a status card difficult also make it harder to take part in community decisions. And the stakes are higher than they might first appear.

First Nations hold votes on the decisions that shape their futures: who leads them, how their lands are governed, and whether to adopt the constitutions and agreements that set the terms of self-government. When members are shut out of those decisions, it is not a scheduling inconvenience. It is a question of whether a community's own people can exercise their right to shape its direction.

For many members, taking part in person has never been realistic. People live away from their home communities for work, education, or family, a reality shaped in no small part by the displacement, housing shortages, and economic pressures that colonial policy produced. Others face health challenges or the simple cost and distance of travel. None of this reflects a weaker tie to community, and a member's voice should not depend on how close they happen to live. When members are shut out by distance, the outcome of a vote no longer reflects the full will of the community, only the will of those who could be there in person.

The deeper issue is that the system of elected chiefs and councils is itself a colonial imposition. Long before contact, First Nations governed themselves through their own systems of governance, grounded in their own laws and relationships, including hereditary leadership, clan structures, and consensus processes. The Indian Act displaced those systems with a standardized model of band elections, much as it displaced a nation's authority to determine its own membership. That imposition is not something any single organization can undo. But the burden it creates is real and immediate: today, a First Nation that has not adopted its own custom election code must run its elections under one of two federal frameworks, the Indian Band Election Regulations under the Indian Act, or the First Nations Elections Act. Both are sets of rules written without First Nations self-determination at their centre, and navigating them, meeting their requirements, running a clear and compliant process, adds administrative work for Nations already carrying heavy loads.

The Response: Working Within the System, and Helping Nations Shape It

The chief-and-council model is not going anywhere soon, and every Nation running an election today operates inside it. What varies is how much say a Nation has over the rules that govern them.

The easiest path is to use one of the federal frameworks already on the shelf. A Nation can hold its elections under the rules in the Indian Act (also known as the Indian Band Election Regulations), or opt into a newer federal system, the First Nations Elections Act, which offers some improvements like longer terms in office. Either way, the Nation doesn't have to build anything itself. That is the appeal, and also the limit: these are standard systems, shaped and controlled by Canada, with little room to reflect what a particular community needs.

The harder path is for a Nation to write its own electoral code. This takes real time and effort, including extensive consultation with members and a community vote to adopt it. But the result is the Nation's own law. Once it takes effect, the federal rules no longer apply, and the Nation runs its own elections, with Canada stepping back entirely.

OneFeather's Election and Voting Services are built for that reality. OneFeather runs elections under any of these, Indian Band Election Regulations, First Nations Elections Act, or a Nation's own custom code, with dedicated electoral officers, so the administrative weight does not fall on overstretched internal teams. And for Nations that want more say over their own process, OneFeather can also work alongside them as they move from the federal frameworks toward a custom code, a shift that does not undo the imposed structure, but does return a measure of control to the Nation. This support reaches beyond elections, too, to ratification votes, referendums, and the other decisions a community needs to make through a fair and trusted process.

There is one more reason the path a Nation takes matters. Digital voting has done a lot to expand participation, but under the federal frameworks a Nation's elections cannot be run digitally. That option is open only to Nations operating under their own custom code. The tool that most widens access in an election, in other words, is reached only by taking the harder governance road. 

OneFeather introduced digital voting in 2015, becoming the first Indigenous organization in Canada to do so. In the decade since, the service has supported over 1,100 voting events, and a clear pattern has emerged: when the requirement to vote in person is removed, more members take part. Turnout rises, and in some votes the majority of ballots are now cast digitally. In one Nation's vote, digital ballots accounted for 78% of total participation. That is not a sign of disengagement. It is a sign of what becomes possible when the obstacle is the only thing taken away.

Every ballot is secure and encrypted. Every eligible member receives one vote. Results are available the moment voting closes.

While the governance barriers described here are specific to First Nations, the infrastructure OneFeather built has served First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities alike. In 2022, it supported what is believed to be one of the largest Indigenous vote in Canadian history: the Métis Nation of Alberta's constitutional ratification. The scale of that outcome was possible in part because members who might otherwise have been left out were able to take part.

When taking part is genuinely accessible, more of a community's members can shape the decisions that affect them. OneFeather can clear much of what stands in a member's way, the paperwork, the distance, the silence. The system that put those barriers there is harder to move, and remains. But working within a system has never meant accepting it as permanent. Some barriers, OneFeather can help dismantle now. Others, not yet.

The Work Continues

What OneFeather has built over the past decade is not a band-aid for a broken system. It is a demonstration of what becomes possible when First Nations peoples lead their own solutions: when technology is built by people who carry the knowledge and lived experience, who understand what colonial systems have cost, and who are committed to what advancing sovereignty actually requires.

A status card accessed without navigating a system designed to exclude you. A ballot cast from wherever you are, because taking part should not depend on where you live. These are not small conveniences. They are a different relationship between First Nations peoples and the systems that shape their lives, built on the principle George Oscar Lewis passed down.

None of this undoes what was imposed. The Indian Act still stands, and the systems built on it still shape the terms First Nations peoples have to work within. What changes is who holds the tools, and whose hands do the building. The work is led by Nations, on their own terms, and that is where it should stay. 

To learn how OneFeather can support your Nation and its members, visit OneFeather.ca.

++++++++++++

About OneFeather

OneFeather is an Indigenous-led technology company, founded by Lawrence Lewis of the We Wai Kai Nation, that builds digital solutions for Nations and their people. Our work is grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and doing, guided by accountability to the communities we serve, and designed to strengthen governance, identity, and participation on each Nation's own terms.