Canada Ruling Facilitates Indian Land Claims High Court Says Tribes Have ‘Aboriginal Title’ In Disputes

A ruling by Canada’s Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for swifter resolution of scores of Indian land claims across Canada by declaring that Indians have “aboriginal title” to lands not specifically covered by treaty.

The ruling should give Indians a powerful legal edge in many land claims battles in all 10 provinces and two territories. It was hailed by native groups as historic.

“At last aboriginal people are hearing a distant chime of justice,” declared a jubilant Ray Jones, an elder of British Columbia’s Gitxsan Indian band, which is seeking ownership of a vast swath of territory in northern British Columbia that is is rich in salmon, timber, and minerals.

In a unanimous decision, the six Supreme Court justices ruled that the mere fact of European settlement of the resource-rich region - roughly three times the size of Massachusetts - does not invalidate Indian rights to that land.

The Supreme Court made an unusual appeal to federal and provincial governments to negotiate with the Indians over the contested land.

“We’ve been given a diamond for Christmas instead of the usual lump of coal,” said Herb George, an elder of the Wet’suwet’en band of Indians, a 1,500-member tribal group that joined forces with 5,000 Gitxsan people in a quest that started 10 years ago.

The Supreme Court ruling simply means that the Indians can continue to legally press their claim to ownership of the contested land. But it comes on the heels of another important decision in New Brunswick that cleared the way for Indians to pursue land claims in that province.

The ruling was a major setback for British Columbia’s powerful logging and mining companies, which have long opposed Indian challenges to their right to cut timber or carve minerals from so-called Crown lands, or lands belonging to the government. Most land in Canada is Crown territory with the government leasing mineral or timber rights to private interests.

Control of resource rights may eventually revert to the Indians, a prospect dreaded by logging and mining companies, which pay only token amounts to the government but would likely face multimillion dollar tolls imposed by native groups.