About this collection

The First Nations Digital Document Source (FNDDS) is a collection of electronic documents used primarily for research in land claims and First Nations issues. Documents include court decisions, legislation, treaties, claims policies, privy council orders, research guides, and instructional resources related to land claims and Aboriginal title, particularly in the Canadian context. The FNDDS is owned collectively by the Claims Research Units (CRU) research directors and is currently being maintained by the staff of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC).

Transcriptions

Transcriptions of select documents commonly-cited in legal specific claims submissions in BC is now available on this site. Documents were transcribed according to our Transcription Guidelines. Click here to view all available transcriptions. To locate the original document, simply conduct a title search.

Search Tips

Search is, by default, set to search the full text of all documents for all the terms entered into the search box (this is equivalent to using the AND search operator between terms). For other search options, try any of the following:

OR - The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. For example, to search for documents that contain either "claims" or "policy" enter: claims OR policy.
NOT - The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. For example, to search for documents that contain "comprehensive" but not "claim" enter: comprehensive NOT claim. Note that the NOT operator cannot be used with just one term in the search query.
" " (phrase) - To search for an exact phrase, enclose the phrase within quotation marks. For example, to search for documents that contain the phrase "indian act" enter: "indian act".
? (single character wildcard) - The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can enter: te?t. Note that you cannot use this as the first character of a search term.
* (multiple character wildcard) - Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can enter: test*. Note that you cannot use this as the first character of a search term.

Further Resources

Specific Claims Law
UBCIC Specific Claims Research Course
Our Homes Are Bleeding
Federal and Provincial Collections of Minutes of Decision, Correspondence, and Sketches
UBCIC Digital Collections
ArchiviaNet: Treaties, Surrenders and Agreements
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC): Acts, Agreements and Land Claims
Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII)
Department of Justice: Consolidated Statutes and Regulations
Library of Parliament: Research Publications