Unceded territory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unceded territory refers to land in North America that was never ceded to a government entity by the indigenous peoples (Aboriginal peoples in Canada and Native Americans in the United States) who originally lived on this land, and that has never been set apart, legislated, founded, created or established as a reserve. Some of these land claims were recognized by treaty with the United States federal government although control was not actually handed over to the Native American peoples.

Native American and aboriginal nations hold that such land rightly belongs to them under international treaties. Section Thirty-five of the Constitution Act, 1982, part of the Constitution of Canada, guarantees rights gained by way of treaty or land claims agreement. Arguably, in some cases this could be true under U.S. law, since the U.S. Constitution states:

“	all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land	”
—Article VI

For example, in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the Lakota nation a settlement for the taking of the Black Hills, land considered sacred by Native Americans, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Lakota, however, refused to accept a monetary settlement and continue to demand that their ancestral land be returned to them.

Another specific case of unceded territory, is the province of British Columbia, Canada. As a part of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which is recognized in the Section Twenty-five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it was required that the Government of Canada make treaties with each of the Indigenous nations over land as they expanded west. In the case of British Columbia, very few agreements were ever negotiated (except for pre-Confederation Vancouver Island treaties), and this has left a legacy of unsettled land claims issues throughout the province.