There are way more Crown-Indigenous Treaties still in full operation and effect throughout Canada than the Crown has ever wanted to admit to. The Crown had liked to focus on post-Confederation after 1867 Treaties, principally being what are referred to as the Numbered Treaties, as well as the Robinson Superior and Robinson Huron Treaties. Two cases finally taught the Crown a lesson that it couldn't ignore the Treaties that were inconvenient to it, because they were signed before 1867, contined less definitive language than later Treaties, and didn't contain "cede, release, surrender" language that the Crown values so much in making claims that Indigneous peoples have far fewer rights than they actually still possess. 

In R. v. Marshall, [1999] 3 SCR 456 the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the Crown’s argument that 17th-century Crown-Indigenous Treaties of Peace and Friendship with the Indigenous peoples of the Maritimes were somehow no longer of any force and effect because they were concluded so long ago and contained perhaps vaguer language than some later Treaties. While the Crown had insisted on a literal interpretation of Treaty text guaranteeing a right of truckhouses (trading posts) which no longer existed, the Court took a much broader view of this language as guaranteeing a right to fish for a moderate livlihood. Although the case was decided decades ago, it arguably remains the leading Aboriginal Treaty Rights case in Canada.

R. v. Montour, 2023 QCCS 4154 recognized the existence of 10 Crown-Indigenous Treaties never before recognized by any Court in Canada, as well as the ongoing legally binding nature of the Covenant Chain as a “Meta-Treaty,” all of whose lack of recognition was partly due to how long ago the Treaties had been concluded, as well as that there were no longer any known written copies of the Treaties, only summaries of the terms of the Treaties in other historic documents. Court found that these Treaties, together with the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, gave rise to a right to economic development within Canada.

Overall, Aboriginal Treaty rights in Canada are solemn promises between particular Indigenous peoples and the Crown, in the form of sacred agreements. Treaties engage the Honour of the Crown, where the Crown is presumed to fulfill its promises, and where the courts won’t support “sharp dealing.” Canadian courts have more recently been focusing on the Indigenous perspective of how Indigenous peoples would have understood the mutual promises, where Treaties were typically negotiated in a bilingual fashion, but were only committed to writing by the Crown scribes there at the time, usually only in the English language.

(FYI, counsel within First Nations Advocates Gordon Scott Campbell was counsel of record in both R. v. Marshall and R. v. Montour).