Where I'm from our elders talk about how we've been on our land since time immemorial, so it's from before memory. It's from that relationship to our land that those rights then follow. As Mr. McIvor stated, those existed well before anyone from any other land came to this land.
Before Canada existed, our peoples all had ways of governing ourselves, but also ways of interacting with other nations. There were times of conflict, times of war, and just like any other nation in the world, those helped shape the peoples that we became.
Our rights, in the words of our elders, is that we are of this land and this land is of us, and it's from that time immemorial linkage that these rights then therefore flow. I would have to concur that there's a fundamental difference in understanding between indigenous nations and our understanding of our rights, and the Canadian government's understanding of our rights. I think that's a very important consideration in the study that you're undertaking as federal representatives.