Historic Indigenous litigation returning to court – Anishinabek News

THUNDER BAY, ON (January 27, 2025) – Ontario and the federal government have not lived up to a Supreme Court of Canada direction that they engage in meaningful negotiations to settle an historic Indigenous treaty case.

As a result, 12 Anishinaabe First Nations north of Lake Superior will seek a just and honourable court-imposed resolution as the Supreme Court directed last July when it set a six-month deadline for negotiations.

“The governments’ refusal to come to grips with their treaty obligations has continued 175 years of broken promises, lies, and neglect,” said Chief Wilfred N. King of Gull Bay First Nation. “Their final decision flies in the face of an extraordinarily powerful order from the Supreme Court. We are now calling on the courts to impose a fair resolution.”

As the negotiations failed to result in a settlement, the governments determined an amount of compensation to pay the First Nations, as required by the Supreme Court. This decision by the two governments would see the First Nations paid $3.6 billion to compensate for the breaches of their obligations to increase annuities under the treaty, breaches that have been committed over the past 175 years.

“For six months, the First Nations have engaged meaningfully and honourably in this process, just as the Supreme Court requested,” Chief King said. “The governments did not. They simply ignored the economic evidence about how much wealth Canada and Ontario took from our lands. They consigned our communities to intergenerational poverty while they appropriated tremendous benefits for themselves. They continue to deny to our communities what we have lost as a result of their breaches. Their decision today does not make up for 175 years of refusing to share the wealth of our lands.”

Expert witnesses in the case had estimated that the benefits to the federal and provincial governments from the extraction of resources from the territory since 1850 amounted to substantially more than what the governments are providing.

The case holds tremendous significance for treaty rights and the obligations of the Crown. It involves vast tracts of land in Northern Ontario that were opened for resource development on the basis of an 1850 agreement known as the Robinson Superior Treaty.

The treaty promised that, as the Crown benefited from the exploitation of natural resources over the years, the First Nation treaty beneficiaries would also benefit by having their annuities increased. At the heart of the annuity clause was a promise to share the wealth of the land, but the promised payments were largely ignored: only one minor increase ever took place, in 1875. The annuity has remained at $4 per person for nearly 150 years.

Speaking unanimously last summer, the Supreme Court said the governmental misconduct was “egregious,” breaching their promises and reducing the treaty promise to “an empty shell.”

The First Nations will now return to Justice Patricia Hennessy of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to request that she impose just, liberal, generous, and honourable compensation. In 2023, Justice Hennessy heard months of testimony from Chiefs, Elders, historians, and economists.

“While this historic case is focused on the losses suffered by our ancestors, it is also about our citizens today and our future generations,” said Chief Patricia Tangie of Michipicoten First Nation. “Just as our ancestors in 1850 sought to secure benefits for their descendants, we today also take our role seriously for our next seven generations. We are carrying on with this struggle so that our children and grandchildren do not have to suffer like so many of our people have for more than a century and a half. That suffering continues to include poverty, poor health and shortened life expectancy.”