In 1989, DNS founder Graeme Drew was invited to instruct on a part-time basis at the main campus of the Native Education College in Vancouver, Canada. This appointment expanded to course delivery at the NEC campuses in Terrace and Williams Lake, BC between 1990 and 2002.
Graeme enjoyed the experience while maintaining his consultancy and subsequently accepted a more involved administrative assignment that required him to relocate for sixteen months (between November 2012 and March 2014) to an isolated indigenous community in northern Canada. The primary objectives of this assignment were to i) design and implement a financial recovery plan, ii) update and ratify a custom election code, and iii) train/mentor a local member to assume his role of Senior Administrative Officer responsible for administering a staff of about twenty individuals. A Custom Election Code was updated and ratified in January 2014 then used in its election later that year.
Shortly afterwards, DNS was retained by another First Nation in the Northwest Territories to update and ratify its Custom Election Code. The community consultation process involved public meetings, workshops, door-to-door canvassing of input, and house visits with elders in this remote Arctic community. The ratification process featured electronic voting (for the first time in northern Canada) enabling its electors living outside the community to vote privately either online or by phone. Members of the student government in the local school were recruited to assist in getting out the vote, and the quorum threshold was reached after an extended voting period, resulting in its first ever written and ratified custom election code.
Since than time, the majority of DNS work with First Nations continues to focus on elections and voting services. See Elections page for more details.