B.C. bands take land claim to Supreme Court

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Two bands in northeastern British Columbia who lost a land claim appeal will take their case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Doig River and Blueberry River bands of the Peace River district in B.C. will appeal the Federal Court of Appeal's Feb. 9 decision denying their right to sue Ottawa, the bands lawyer Thomas Berger said.

In the 2-1 decision, the court ruled that the bands did not have the right to sue Ottawa over the loss of their reserve in 1945 because the province's 30-year limitation on legal action had expired, Berger said.

The court ruled the bands' right to sue the government expired in 1978, despite acknowledging the Indians were illiterate and therefore at a disadvantage when they signed their land away.

"They were trappers with little or no formal education, lacked sophistication in matters of business and were...most dependent on the Crown for advice in the management of their assets, chief of which was the interest they held in I.R.172," Justice J.A. Stone wrote in his decision.

"They were thus in a position of considerable vulnerability."

Two of the three justices ruled, however, that the Crown was under no obligation to advise the Natives that the surrender of their 28-square-mile reserve was not in their best interest.

Chief Justice Isaac, the only dissenting vote, disagreed with the court, ruling that he would have affirmed the Crown's obligations to the bands. He also would have held that the Crown had been guilty of equitable fraud.

The reserve, established in 1916, was composed of 18,168 acres of land known as the Montney Indian Reserve No. 172. The land claim included subsurface rights which have since proved to be a valuable source of oil and gas.

The land was bought by the federal government for $70,000 to be made available to veterans returning home from the Second World War.