Temagami ruling dangerous precedent

Year Published:  1989
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX3682

Abstract: 
The Ontario Court of Appeal has rejected the land claim case brought to it by the Bear Island Indian band of the Temagami region of Ontario. The court ruled that the band has no claim to ownership of the 10,360 square kilometres of land it was claiming. The court said that the band's rights to the land had been ceded to the crown for the equivalent of $25 by virtue of an 1850 treaty. Lawyers and activists in the Native rights field were stunned by the decision, which sets a number of dramatic precedents. The court ruling says that in law, aboriginal land rights are extinguishable at will by governments, whether all the requirements of a formal treaty surrendering those lands were followed or not, and that a Native group can be deemed to have given up its historic lands simply by accepting cash payments and other treaty benefits, whether or not it actually agreed to such a land deal. The ruling also says that a Native group can lose its historic lands and be bound to a treaty by the actions of an individual who may not even belong to that group. The ruling overturns the notion that Canadian governments were and still are obliged to follow a 226-year-old British directive known as the Royal Proclamation, which required British colonies to negotiate and reach agreement with Native groups before taking their lands for European settlement. The Temagami ruling clears the way for Ontario's Liberal government to permit logging roads into the wilderness which Natives and environmentalists have been striving to preserve from logging. The band will seek permission to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada, and if necessary to the World Court.