Thanks for the question.
This is the Gabriel Sylliboy case I think you're referring to, in which Judge Patterson of the county court in Nova Scotia, on Cape Breton Island, ruled against Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy, who had been charged with hunting muskrat out of season. The upshot of that decision became seminal in terms of understanding Mi'kmaq treaty rights, whether there was a treaty or not, and whether it was valid legally. That continued up until the 1980s, with the Supreme Court decision in 1985.
The other point about that, which is important to remember, is that the Mi'kmaq never surrendered, through any of their treaties, title to their land. They were told in the 1970s and 1980s that the title no longer existed because it had been “superseded by law”.
Part of the issue for many Mi'kmaq people and Maliseet people across Atlantic Canada is that they still have title to their land, and there is a sense that they have been marginalized and that their resources have been taken away without their consent. When I look at the situation today and even back to the 1990s, that is part of what drives their understanding of their own history and of what you could call their historical consciousness.