Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

As a rule, Aboriginal Rights are the rights of Indigenous people to carry on with their traditional and ancestral customs of hunting, fishing, trapping, feasting and holding religious ceremonies. They stem in part from Indigenous occupation of lands prior to European contact and assertions of sovereignty. Aboriginal rights also flow from the many treaties that Indigenous leaders signed with the Crown over the last few centuries, which are matters of contract law—sacred contract law. Through these treaties the Crown acquired a great deal of land from Indigenous signatories, who received remuneration and rights. Insofar as Indigenous signatories entered into these contracts voluntarily and in an enlightened manner, the Crown lawfully acquired the land on which most Canadian homes are built. Aboriginal land claims arise in BC primarily because provincial lawyers cannot produce the land transfer deeds needed to prove that the Crown lawfully acquired land on which it has built cities and townships over the last