The Beaver Lake Cree nation filed suit against the Government of Canada on May 14, 2008, alleging their tribal rights guaranteed under Treaty No. 6 were being violated by Tar Sand extraction and processing. Specifically, the vitiated rights include a number of game and range use guarantees the Cree were granted in exchange for giving up property rights. A similar case, Tsilhqot’in First Nation v. British Columbia, returned a result favourable to the plaintiff in 2007. Essentially, “The Tsilhqot'in Nation was declared to have hunting and trapping rights, the right to capture wild horses, and the right to trade skins and pelts as required to secure a moderate livelihood; those rights were declared to have been unjustifiably infringed by the provincial forestry and land use planning regimes.”
Given these favorable precedents, my group is going to examine how international law usefully be brought to bear on this case. For my individual project, I will be examining environmental rights, which likely will apply in this context. I will, through academic research and direct interviews, ascertain the extent of the environmental damage suffered by the Cree. This evidence will then be used to invoke relevant international statutes and legal precedent contained in IJC decisions, treaties, U.N. resolutions, and any other legal instruments. The end product will be a brief or other item that will allow the Cree to usefully apply international law to their plight and obtain a successful outcome.
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