Try five tools that bring First Nations’ knowledge, laws and priorities into oil spill decisions.
A hands-on session from the DST Project. Five decision support tools are set up at landings around the room, each with people who helped develop it. Every tool is set against the same spill scenario, each at a different moment from day one to recovery. Visit each landing, try the tool, and add your own thinking.
Bring the knowledge of your own vessel, whatever your role in spills, and come paddle alongside the Nation representatives and partners who created these tools. Learn how they centre Indigenous perspectives in spill decisions, and how you could bring that into your own work.
Think of the fair as a room full of conversations rather than a row of talks. Drop in during either session and go at your own pace. The tools are still prototypes, and the fair is the DST Project’s third workshop, so what you notice is part of the work.
Start at any landing. The suggested route follows the numbers from the entrance.
The simple, hypothetical scenario below was used to develop the DSTs you will be exploring. At each landing, you’ll focus on one decision-making prompt that will show how each DST might re-centre the process to ensure that Indigenous perspectives are reflected in the decision-making process and outcomes.
Hypothetical. From the DST Project’s Workshop #2 summary report (April 2026), shortened.
Pause-and-reflect questions built into every phase of preparedness, response and recovery, so it becomes second nature to stop and check that no perspective or concern is being left out.
In the spillA large influx of responders strains the infrastructure and resources of nearby communities.
A shared geospatial database of equipment, resources and trained responders, so Nations and federal and provincial partners can see training needs, local capacity, and who can help from next door.
In the spillThe ship runs aground. Capacity limits mean only 10% of the planned protective booming goes out before oil reaches shore.
Measurable, meaningful indicators of health for land, water and people, co-developed by all co-governance partners, weaving narrative and traditional knowledge with sampling and analytic data science.
In the spillLocal First Nations stop harvesting along the impacted coast indefinitely, even where cleanup targets were met, because of uncertainty.
A guide to creating and running collaborative processes before, during and after a spill, so decisions re-centre on Indigenous laws, values and priorities.
Tried on a real shoreline in June 2026: Na̲nwak̲olas Council in partnership with K'ómoks First Nation, as featured in the Walking Alongside video in the DST Theatre.
In the spillA Unified Command forms: Coast Guard, BC Environment, the ship’s owner and three impacted First Nations.
A process that centres Indigenous perspectives and laws in consensus-based decisions through response, recovery and after-action. Questions travel both ways between the Incident Management Team and a Council of Knowledge Holders embedded into incident management structures.
In the spillCleanup targets are set through SCAT. Oil is left to weather naturally on many kilometres of shoreline.
Paddling Together is also one of the decision support tools. It treats response as a shared journey, ongoing through every phase and across incidents. Its values are the crew agreements for the fair.
Coastal First Nations – Great Bear Initiative leads a multi-year project, funded by the NRCan Multi-Partner Research Initiative, to build oil spill decision support tools that incorporate BC First Nations’ knowledge, traditions, laws and priorities. A Steering Committee with representatives of Canada, BC and Northern Shelf Bioregion First Nations guides the work.
The tools here came out of Workshop #1 (Vancouver, October 2025) and Workshop #2 (Victoria, April 2026). This fair is Workshop #3.
The Journey Guide is yours to keep. Bring it out the next time you’re planning or responding alongside others, and use your notes to check your own bearings. To enter the raffle, drop your stamp card at Inventor Island. Your name goes only on the card’s ballot, which is used to contact the winner and destroyed after the draw.
