Paulette Caveat

In 1973, a group of Dene chiefs filed a caveat at the land titles office in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories to gain a legal interest in 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 km2) of land in northern Canada. The chiefs wanted to claim the land by virtue of their aboriginal rights, and prevent further development until ownership had been settled.

It came to be known as the Paulette Caveat, named after François Paulette, who was chief of the Fort Smith Chipewyan at the time, and one of the chiefs who initiated the caveat.

If the caveat was allowed, all development in the area could be halted until land claims were settled. The land office referred the caveat to the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories and Justice William Morrow, the only sitting judge of that court at the time.

Morrow held a six-week hearing process in several communities in the Northwest Territories, some only accessible by plane. He wanted to find out if aboriginal people had understood that they were signing over their land to the government, when they signed Treaty 8 and Treaty 11, several decades earlier.

Morrow listened to testimony from elderly people in the communities who witnessed the signing of land treaties decades earlier. Morrow even held his court at the bedside of elderly people unable to make it to the makeshift courtrooms.

Many witnesses testified that the people who signed the treaties were under the impression that they were committing to a peace and friendship deal with the Canadian government and the white man.

Morrow found that the Dene did not understand the treaties to have relinquished their traditional rights to the land. He ruled that the chiefs had sufficiently established a case for claiming aboriginal rights so as to warrant the filing of a caveat.

The finding was appealed by the federal government and later overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada on a point of law. The higher court didn't question Morrow's definition of aboriginal rights.

The ruling prompted the need to clarify land rights in the resource-rich land in northern Canada. It was the precursor to further negotiations between the Dene and the federal government to establish and clarify land rights, and talks are still going on as of 2005.