Canadian Indian Claims

[Ed Weick]

In a posting yesterday, I made the point that in Canada "we've tried to deal with it via an Aboriginal claims process which is intended to define and make explicit the Aboriginal rights entrenched in our Constitution as these apply to particular groups.  This is not a fully satisfactory process since it applies mainly to Aboriginal people who did not come under treaty during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries and whose rights have not therefore been defined.  These people are considered to have 'outstanding claims'."  This is known as the "comprehensive claims process".     I should have mentioned that there is a parallel process for Indian people who have treaties but can make the case that certain provisions of their treaties have not been honored or have been violated.  This is the "specific claims process",  One specific claims case with which I have some familiarity deals with lands in Saskatchewan.  The Indian Bands of Saskatchewan signed treaties in the 1870s well before Saskatchewan became a province in 1905.  Lands and resources were not transferred from the federal government to the Government of Saskatchewan until the 1930s.  They were transferred on condition that the Province fulfill all outstanding land-related treaty obligations.  The Province did not do so.  The result is a recent, and I would surmise, still continuing step-by-step, band-by-band, process of determining how much additional land the Indian people are entitled to and how much monetary compensation this might require in lieu of land.   Ed Weick