Indians lose Canadian land claim case

VANCOUVER, Canada — The provincial Supreme Court ruled Friday that a Canadian Indian tribe has no claim to a vast tract of northwestern British Columbia.

The ruling ended a three-year court battle that cost an estimated $25 million and involved the biggest land claim in Canadian history. It is expected to be appealed to the national Supreme Court in Ottawa.

The Gitksan Wet’suwet’en Indian tribe claimed almost 40,000 square miles of largely virgin forest, river systems and mineral wealth. The tribe’s 8,000 Indians live on a reservation of about 35 square miles.

The often colorful testimony included oral histories from tribal elders who described native ceremonies, traditions and trapping methods.

In his 400-page judgment, Chief Justice Allan McEachern upheld the government’s argument that any Indian claim to the land ended years ago.

“In my judgment the aboriginal rights of the natives were lawfully extinguished by the Crown in the colonial period,” McEachern wrote.

The Indians’ lawyers had argued the government was wrong to assume colonial laws terminated the Indian’s rights when British Columbia was colonized.

The area claimed by the Gitksan Wet’suwet’en (pronounced GIT-san Wet-SOO-e-tan) Indians includes the British Columbia towns of Smithers, Burns Lake, Houston, Telkwa and Hazelton.