In 1996, Kelly Lake Cree Nation filed a comprehensive land claim against the Federal Government of Canada in Federal Court, and a civil claim against the Province of British Columbia, July 2010. The claims are based on the fact that KLCN citizens are descendants of Indigenous peoples who have lived on an area of land straddling the current border of the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia since time immemorial and at least since before The Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the making of Treaty 8 in 1899.
The elements of the Comprehensive claim are based on Aboriginal Rights and Title arising from traditional use and occupancy of land. Settlement agreements are comprehensive in scope and include such elements as: land title; specified hunting, fishing and trapping rights; financial compensation, and; other rights and benefits.
The process of negotiating a settlement on a comprehensive land claim, which is viewed as modern-day treaty making, explains access and ownership to land and resources. The economic drivers on our lands is another measure of compensation through calculating Oil and Gas levies as part of potential revenue sharing profits taken within our territory.
Comprehensive claims settlements may also include self-government arrangements. They affect those parts of Canada where Aboriginal title (such as BC) has not been dealt with by treaty or other lawful means.
Comprehensive claims involve a group of bands or Aboriginal communities within a geographic area (our family headman traditional land use areas). It is important to note for the context to which a group can be referred to, the headsman families that largely occupy KLCN territory some 40,000km2 today, our governance structure further defines our statement of claim.
KLCN prepared a statement of claim in 1991 based upon the criteria that KLCN
Our people never placed boundaries over their territory, elders tell us,
"you know you’re still within our lands when you hear our Cree language being spoken, when it becomes no more, than you know you’re out of our territory."
The issue of compensation ($5.2 billion dollars) is resolved on a case by case basis and varies with each court decision and each negotiated agreement. The damages to the KLCN territory must be commensurate with the degree of impacts to our lands.
Up to this point, the government has failed to accommodate and consult with the KLCN.
Although, the resource sector and government continue extracting resources from KLCN territory, our people have a vision, and despite the continual infringements upon our rights, we have never surrendered our aboriginal rights and title to our lands.