The Department of Lands has recently updated and harmonized its land management standards and criteria for leases for cabins. The Department of Lands will be evaluating Unauthorized Occupancies that were constructed
prior to April 1, 2014 against these standards and criteria to determine if a lease may be appropriate. If the occupancy complies with all standards, the owner may be able to apply for a lease.

Frequently asked questions about unauthorized occupancy.

Benefits of having a lease

The document linked here is currently only in English, it is a voluntary declaration form for an occupant of a structure on public land to fill out if they wish to state their structure is ancillary to the exercise of an established or asserted treaty right.

As a first step, the Department of Lands is posting all structures that are occupying public land without a lease or tenure instrument in place to gather information on the nature of the occupancy.

Please contact the Department of Lands as identified 
on your posting notice to discuss your occupancy. 
Keep your posting notice and have it on hand when 
you contact the Department. 

Approximately 80% of land in the Northwest Territories (NWT) is public land, under the administration and control of the GNWT. Since Devolution in 2014, the Department of Lands has held the responsibility to administer and manage all public land in the NWT. Public land includes both surface and sub-surface lands (e.g., land below bodies of water). When the PLA comes into force, it will apply to all public land. Under current legislation, public land includes Territorial Lands, Commissioner’s Land, public highways, and Territorial Protected Areas – these are shown in purple on the map. The PLA will not apply to municipal land, private lands selected under comprehensive land claim agreements (in the Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Sahtu and Tłı̨chǫ settlement regions) – these are shown in orange on the map. The PLA also will not apply to federally-administered lands shown in green on the map, which includes contaminated waste sites, sites set aside for conservation purposes, and First Nation reserve lands. Jurisdiction of those lands was retained by the federal government after devolution.