This Impact Story is the second of a duo exploring recommendations from OLW’s first ever round of Focus Groups in 2024 to 2025. Take a look at Part 1 for a dive into insights from dialogue on Our Common Agenda.
My colleagues and I are thankful for the individuals and organizations who lent their experience, expertise, and energy to this reflexive dialogue process.
-Natalija Vojno, Right Relations Focus Group Facilitator (OLW Network Engagement Lead)
Background & Dialogue Themes
From November 2024 to early 2025, Our Living Waters convened a member-driven Right Relations Focus Group to explore how to better uphold treaty relationships and advance reciprocity and reconciliation in watershed protection and governance. The group aimed to promote Right Relations with water through discussions centered on:
- exploring accountability;
- honouring water’s sacredness;
- championing Indigenous leadership;
- recognizing that unlearning and learning are ongoing processes.
Exploring accountability: While many OLW Network members work closely with First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in the watersheds they work to protect, most (but not all) member organizations have non-Indigenous leadership. In parallel, rights holders continue to confront barriers as they strive to safeguard their water sources and ancestral domains. The historic and ongoing impacts of colonialism, including resource exploitation, persist in sidelining Indigenous leaders in water governance. With this context in mind, Focus Group participants explored personal, organizational, and inter-organizational accountability in Right Relations, engaging in a reflexive process by asking: “What does water need from us?”
Honouring water’s sacredness: Through dialogue, the Focus Group continued to return to the theme of shifting from strictly technical approaches to inclusive practices that integrate lived experiences and traditional knowledge. A prominent theme was respecting and understanding different worldviews in relation to water – this included sharing how to respectfully incorporate a plurality of cultural practices and ceremonies into professional settings.
Championing Indigenous leadership: While seeking guidance from Indigenous leaders amplifies Indigenous priorities, it is also critical to resource knowledge keepers and respect data protocols. Focus Group contributors examined how to enable co-governance, support self-determination, apply the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and ultimately build collaborative partnerships. One practical example participants highlighted was aligning policy positions with Indigenous priorities by calling for Free, Prior and Informed Consent in exchanges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments.
Recognizing that unlearning and learning are ongoing processes: Focus Group participants emphasized that governance should serve as a platform for dialogue rooted in shared knowledge and respect. This requires both unlearning and learning – deconstructing assumptions and rebuilding ethical spaces where all voices are valued. For non-Indigenous people, this means a lifelong commitment to reflection, humility, treaty responsibilities, and relationship-building, while recognizing the systemic challenges Indigenous communities face. Though the Focus Group has ended, participants expressed that “what was sown in these dialogues is alive in us and this work continues.”
Insights
As a result of the dialogues, Focus Group participants made a set of specific recommendations for consideration:
- Place First Nations, Métis and Inuit leadership, priorities, and data principles at the core of a future process to modernize the Shared Measurement System (SMS) by working with Indigenous advisors. Consider starting with the three current impact measures that could have the most relevancy for Indigenous water leaders: Drinking Water Advisories, Human Right to Water, and National Drinking Water Standards. For new impact measures, foster a process of co-creation that reflects regional Indigenous priorities.
- Acknowledge inextricable traditional and cultural connections to land and water priorities in the SMS in a manner that abides by First Nations principles of ownership, control, access, and possession (OCAP®) over data collection and use.
- Amplify stories that speak to treaty relationships and the inherent right to self-government, recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which includes the jurisdiction of First Nations in relation to water, source water, drinking water, wastewater and related infrastructure on First Nations lands.
Moving Forward
As one Focus Group member put it, they will continue to “carry the feeling and knowledge of these dialogues” with them. The individual inner work is ongoing, but considerations from these dialogues can be incorporated into future workshops and OLW communications.
Through consultations with Network members, we are also working to identify emerging themes for our next round of Focus Groups. To date, suggestions include: valuing ecosystem services, innovative funding models for watershed stewardship, transparency & enforcement, and piloting new technologies for water management.
Are you interested in being part of a future Focus Group? Let us know at info@ourlivingwaters.ca.
About Natalija Vojno
Network Engagement Lead, Our Living Waters: water and positive peace advocate who is grateful for connections with friends, family, and nature’s relations
