Thanks. I'm sorry for the malfunctioning there. My mom would be embarrassed. She's from an old French family that spoke French for 350 years, and I'm the first one who can't.
On this point, I think it's really important to have in mind the difference between indigenous rights and aboriginal rights.
Indigenous rights are the rights of indigenous people that they had before colonizing nations appeared on their land. They're based through their own laws. Aboriginal rights—aboriginal title being one of those—that's the construction of Canadian courts. Canadian courts have created this body of aboriginal rights under the Canadian Constitution, under section 35.
Not far from here I was walking and there's a statue of what's supposed to be an indigenous man shooting a bow and arrow at a deer, you've probably seen it. From my perspective the way the aboriginal rights have developed, it's often along those lines that Canadian courts have looked at indigenous people and have tried to figure out what's essential about them as a distinctive culture: Let's preserve that, their aboriginality, and then we'll protect that under section 35 of the Constitution.
I think there's a fundamental problem with that because it comes back to translating who indigenous people are and their rights into a form that is recognizable. We often talk about section 35 of the Constitution being an empty box. This was a concern when the Constitution was repatriated in 1982. The courts interpreted it as an empty box, and with serious concerns, but then they've been filling the box with what the Canadian courts—and most of them are non-indigenous people—have determined is what makes you essentially an indigenous person. I think that's a fundamental problem with this.
When I speak to my clients about this, we always talk about how there's a difference between indigenous rights and aboriginal rights. Aboriginal rights are constructs under Canadian law. There are a lot of problems with it. Indigenous rights are specific to indigenous nations. There's not one set of indigenous rights. There are Mi'kmaq rights, Tŝilhqot’in rights, Secwépemc rights, Anishinabe rights—all the wonderful range of indigenous peoples across the country. I think going forward it's important for us all to keep being aware of those differences.