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 Native peoples (the First peoples of Canada and Native American tribes or nations) who held the original title to the 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 First peoples nations hold that such land rightly belongs to them under international treaties. 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 apart of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which is still recognized in the Section Twenty-five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Canadian Constitution, it required that the Government of Canada make treaties with each of the Indigenous nations over land as they expanded west. Except when reaching British Columbia, very little agreements were ever negotiated, and this left a legacy of unsettled land claims issues in British Columbia.