This Is Not the End of the Story

Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada35. (1) The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.(2) In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.— Constitution Act, 1982

This is the story, or at least one part of the story, of how section 35 came to be. Like any good story, it has to start somewhere, and it starts with Harry Chingee, chief of the Sekani people, who was showing me how to cast a fly rod, while my friend Jack Woodward was wading in the middle of a fast-flowing river. We were near the town of Mackenzie, in central British Columbia, although it did seem like the North to me at the time. It was summer 1977. Sitting on the grassy riverbank, in a forest clearing down a hill from Harry’s log house, I was far from Glasgow, where I was born, and far even from Vancouver, where I...