In today's society, Aaboriginal rights@ has been considered by some to be an ambiguous term. In 1970, for example, Prime Minister Trudeau is reported to have said that the concept of aboriginal rights is so complicated as to be unworkable. But to the People of the First Nations, the concept is basic, simple and unambiguous: aboriginal rights means Athe inherent right of sovereignty and independence through self-government.@

This includes the right to develop and protect our own lifestyle, economy, and sacred traditions. The First Nations have the inherent right to determine what our future and the destiny of our land shall be. That is the reality of aboriginal rights. To our people aboriginal rights is not a mere concept - it is a reality.

Because we are the first people to live on Turtle Island (North America) we have a claim to certain rights including the basic right to life claimed by all people. However, when we talk about aboriginal rights, we are talking about our inherent right to self-determination that applies to all aborigines.

To understand aboriginal rights we must understand the meaning of civilization. Civilization is the accumulation of the traditions and culture of a people, including self-expression in dance, music, art, law, religion, the telling of stories, the writing of books and so on. The aboriginal people of North and South America constitute a number of different civilizations.

Aboriginal rights guarantee each indigenous nation the right to develop its own traditions and culture - its own civilization. Each aboriginal nation of people has the inherent right to seek happiness, to seek a comfortable way of living, and to develop itself at its own pace. To recognize that the aboriginal people were a civilization long before the Whiteman came to North America is to acknowledge that, as aboriginal people, we exercised our aboriginal right to govern ourselves. Conversely, to acknowledge that we have aboriginal rights is to recognize that these rights flow from our long-standing civilization.

Aboriginal and European Attitudes Toward the Land

As nations of people we made laws to govern ourselves, including laws governing our use of the land and its resources. But our attitude toward the land and its use was, and still is, very different from the European attitude. We believe that no individual or group owns the lands, that it was given to us collectively by the Creator to use, not to own, and that we have a sacred obligation to protect the land and use its resources wisely. Our links with the earth are sacred links that no man can sever.

For the Europeans, the idea that land can be owned and exploited for profit is basic to their system. The European political and legal systems have been developed to reflect this concept of the land. But this basic assumption is absolutely foreign to the Aboriginal way of thinking. Yet, this foreign world view is the basis for all legislation that has been enacted since the coming of the European to North America.

The Treaties

The fact that treaties were made indicates a recognition by colonial law that we had sovereignty in our land. In fact, there was a wide-spread acknowledgement that the aboriginal occupants of the land have certain legal claims because of their historical sovereignty over the land. This is acknowledged in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The English legal system developed a theory that these claims are limited in certain ways, but recognized that aboriginal tribes have the legal right to possess their tribal territories. The treaties were seen by both sides as establishing basic patterns of interrelationships for the future. They were based on the idea of mutual consent and on the understanding that Aboriginal peoples have legal rights and control of the land.

While the treaties have not been totally in our favour, the law has never been denied that the aboriginal tribes have legal rights to process their tribal territories.

Our Nations

Our Aboriginal rights allow us to determine our future as nations, the First Nations of Turtle Island. In 1977, an international conference on discrimination against indigenous population of the Americans, put forward a declaration of principles which tried to get recognition for indigenous or aboriginal people as nations under international law. The criteria for recognition as nations are the following:

• That the people have a permanent population.
• That they have a defined territory.
• That they have a government.
• That they have the ability to enter into a relations with other states.

We can assure Canada and the international community that using these criteria we can define ourselves as a nation:

We have a population that is permanent. We have always existed and we are not going to die out or fade into oblivion.

We have a defined territory: the land from the Arctic in the North to the Mexican border in the South; from the Alantic in the East to the Pacific in the West.

We have a democratic government based on the clan system given to us by the Creator.

We have the ability to enter into relations with other states. This is demonstrated by our formal relationships established in the past with other nation states including France, Great Britain and Canada. We have never ceded or surrendered our right to enter into relationships with other states.

Under these criteria, we, the First Nations, have a solid basis for claiming our aboriginal right to determine what our future will be and to determine how we are going to attain our goals.

Our System of Government

When the Europeans first came to America, there were systems of government in operation in this land. The democratic clan system employed by the Aboriginal Nations of Turtle Island was studied by the European, and was picked up by and large and incorporated into their developing governing systems.

Our government has been dormant because of the influx of Canadian federal laws and, in particular, the Indian Act and its administrators the Department of Indian Affairs.

We must draw from our people what they want to see developed in our communities with regard to our own governing structures. Only then we can begin to educate our people to the traditional rights, governments, and ways of living, and the Aboriginal peoples rights to determine our future.

The right to govern one's people and development and the right to determine one's destiny and goals must be an aboriginal right.

Independence

When the Nishnawbe-Aski of Northern Ontario made their declaration in 1977, they stressed that their objective was to see full development of cultural, economic independence cannot be divorced, one from another.

The educational system and the political development of our various Aboriginal Nations in Canada set out the lifestyle of the particular tribe in whatever area of America they lives. For instance, the economy of the Ojibway and the Cree people living in this part of North America was based totally upon animal, fish, bird, and plant life.

The Great Spirit made no mistake. He allowed animal life to flourish to provide for the people. Hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering were not separate issues to be dealt with at a political level by certain components of Government. They were part of the socio-economic system of our people, and they are included in the overall definition of what aboriginal rights are.

In other words, Aboriginal Nations were independent and exercised their aboriginal right within their own lands, boundaries, and under their own sovereignty.

The Aboriginal Nation and the Constitution

Aboriginal people must clearly spell out what our true aboriginal rights are and these must be recognized by Canada, but not be part of the Canadian Constitution. These rights are non-negotiable. But we must take a united stand, or we are going to find it very difficult to convince Canada=s First Ministers that they must heed our claims.

We are in the heat of a tremendous battle focused on jurisdiction. The premiers and Prime Minister are trying to reduce the aboriginal rights question to a series of legal issues that they can contest or disregard. At the same time, they are going to try to placate the Aboriginal people by saying, AWe will look after you; we will improve your conditions; we will accommodate you with whatever your needs might be.@ But the bottm line is that they will try to consolidate their jurisdiction over our land and resources. The First Ministers have only one thought in mind as they enter the constitutional negotiations: AHow can we gain complete control over all Indian lands and resources?

The Canadian Government's Attitude to Aboriginal Rights

In 1969 in the House of Commons, then Indian Affaire Minister Jean Chretien had these words to say about aboriginal and treaty rights: AWe will honour our lawful obligations to the aboriginal people.@ But what, precisely, did he mean by those words? He meant that Canada has obligation must be kept, and if those obligations are defined in such a manner that the Government can accept the defintion, then, the Honourable Minister is saying, AWell sure, if we've really made these kinds of commitments, if this really what we said in the Treaty, if this is really what we understand to be aboriginal tenure in the land, if this fits our interpretations, then we will honour those obligations.

Take note that he is saying that those obligation must be Alaw tested. They must be acceptable to the law. In other words, the legitimate legal sovereignty, the Government of the country, makes the law. It says what is right and wrong, how you can do certain things, and how you can=t do certain things.

But we ask these questions. When the explorer from the European nations came to America, did they find a land that had no law whatsoever? Did they find a land that had no people? And, if they did find a land with no people, did they recognize the fact that these people were living under their own system, under their own aboriginal rights? If these people were living under their own system, within their own legal system and framework, of law, who gave the European the right to come and trample on that sysytem and impose a new legal system in North America? If the aboriginal rights of the aboriginal peoples have been trampled under foot, this fact is not readily going to be recognized and acknowledged by the very people who trampled on this vital right. They are going to fight every movement to bring truth to bear.

Let us go back again to the quotation that we took from the Nishnawbe-Aski Declaration. In our minds, we have a clear concept of what our lands tenure is. There could be no questioning of it in the minds of our hunters, and trappers who every year use their traditional traplines, or the fishermen who fish the lakes and the rivers of Nishnawbe-Aski land. For them, there is no question about our tenure in this land. However, in the plan of the Government of Canada, which makes the laws, aboriginal rights to be determined by a court interpretation. But so far as the courts are concerned, aboriginal rights is a comceptual right only. That is to say, it is concept that exists only in the mind until it is drafted into some kine of law defining aboriginal rights, and it is the government appointed judges wh interpret the law dealing with aboriginal rights. In other words, if the whiteman's law and the whiteman's court will determine how the conept land tenure will be defined in practise.

Who Will Decide What Our Aboriginal Rights Are?

Court cases have never solved the riddle of Aboriginal Rights. The Baker Lake cases in Canada is a prime exampple of what happens when the dominant governing society through is enacted laws and judicial system decides what aboriginal rights are. In the Baker Lake case, the court said that the Iunit have aboriginal rights because they have always been here from time immemorial. Because of this one basic fact, it recognized that aboriginal rights do exist. However, the Supreme Court of Canada states in its judgement that an aboriginal people does nmot relate to the land and, therefore, the land is open to exploiters who want to extract gas and oil, destroy the environment, and then move our. The indigenous population is then left with more evil consequences than any potential benefits that could possibly come to them from resource exploitation.

In the communities, our aboriginal nations, our fishermen, our trappers, our hunters, our school children, our women all understand what our aboriginal rights are. There is nothing to difficult to comprehend. Aboriginal rights is only a riddle to those who do not want their taking of the land interfered with by the aboriginal owners of this continent. No matter what kind of puzzle the political leaders try to make of aboriginal rights, it is not complex or mysterious.

Aboriginal people have a clear understanding of what their land tenure is. We should have a say in framing the laws that will define aboriginal rights. Not the provinces, not the federal government, not the Canadian courts, but our Chiefs, our Elders, our people, our children, the Aboriginal rights. It is we who must protect our aboriginal rights to self-determination as a nation, and to develop and use the resources of the land without interference and intimidation by anyone. We have an obligation to reserve the rights granted to us by Creating. We have that right now. We have always had that right. We are determined to have that right in the future. This is our aboriginal right.