About KnowledgeKeepr

The intelligence layer for First Nations engagement.

Verified governance, finance, legal, lands and media records on all 638 First Nations in Canada — in one place. Built by Indigenous people, for everyone who needs to work with them.

Why we exist

Every major project follows one of two paths: partnership or conflict.

The difference, more often than not, comes down to information.

KnowledgeKeepr grew out of years of work in Indigenous consultation. The same thing went wrong again and again: the businesses, governments and agencies that needed to engage a First Nation couldn’t get an accurate, current, complete picture of it. Engagement stalled, went sideways, or never happened the right way — and for every Nation that didn’t want a project, there was another nearby that did, and was never approached.

The information was almost always public. It was just scattered across federal databases, court records, audited statements and band websites, out of date, and stripped of the context that made it usable — and only the best-resourced players ever assembled the full picture.

So we built it: one verified, source-cited profile for every First Nation in Canada. Indigenous-owned and Indigenous-led, built to turn engagement into partnership instead of conflict — and to move billions into communities, not into standoffs.

What we stand for

How we work

Indigenous-owned and accountable

KnowledgeKeepr is a First Nations–owned business, built and run by band members answerable to their own communities. These standards aren’t imposed from outside; they’re the ones we hold ourselves to.

Public, verified, cited

We work only from the public record, every figure checked by a person and traced to its source. No scraping behind logins, no guesswork — intelligence you can defend in front of a board or a council.

Respect for each Nation’s authority

We honour each Nation’s authority over how it’s represented. We’re explicit about what we will and won’t collect, and any Nation can ask us to correct or update its own record.

Built to be acted on

Not a data dump. Every profile is structured so you can understand a Nation, benchmark it against its peers, and walk in already informed.

Recognized, funded & in use

We’re not building this alone.

MIT Solve

Semifinalist

Indigenous Venture Challenge

Selected

NRC IRAP

Funded

Indigenext

Accelerator

6,000 beta users

organic, zero spend

The team

The people behind the platform

A small, First Nations–led team that, between us, brings half a century of experience working at every level of First Nations governance and partnership-building — in consultation, finance, administration and technology.

Robert Jago

Founder & CEO

A member of Kwantlen First Nation and the Nooksack Tribe, Robert has spent fifteen-plus years in Indigenous governance and consultation — including government relations for his own Nation and consultation work on major projects, most notably the stal̓əw̓asəm (Pattullo) bridge. A serial entrepreneur in education and compliance software, he has worked at BCIT and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, writes on First Nations governance, lands and identity for The Walrus, The Tyee, The Guardian and CBC, and co-produced the Pretendians podcast.

Selected writing

The Warrior Society Rises — Grassy Narrows · The Guardian Canada’s Hollow Concern for First Nations Democracy · The Walrus Canada’s National Parks Are Colonial Crime Scenes · The Walrus

Frank Busch

Managing Director of Business Relations

From the First Nations Finance Authority, where he helped deploy close to $1 billion in capital and worked with roughly half of Canada’s First Nations. Frank leads growth and partnerships.

Paul Lanza

Lead Developer

Architect of the platform and Montreal-based engineering lead. Paul taught Rails at Le Wagon and owns the data pipelines and the all-Nations database behind all 638 profiles.

Duncan Kennedy

Finance

A SaaS founder and partner at Indigenext who has backed dozens of Indigenous startups, with senior administration experience inside First Nations government. Duncan runs the business model and the funding behind the build-out.

Bradley Shende

Partnerships

An entrepreneur and partner at Indigenext who helped launch Native-Land.ca. Bradley opens doors across industry and the public sector, connecting KnowledgeKeepr with major partners.

Behind the core team is a network of contracted Indigenous auditors — specialists in their own territories who verify the data for accuracy and add the local context only they can.

Work with us

Let’s talk.

Whether you’re a Nation, a partner, or someone who wants to help build this — we’d like to hear from you.

Get in touch See the platform