The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) is applauding a Saskatchewan provincial court ruling in favour of treaty hunters from Ontario.
One of the hunters from the Six Nations First Nation in Ontario says they have travelled to Saskatchewan for a number of years and only recently have they run into trouble.
"We go to Saskatchewan probably the last 10 years and we hunt for our own purpose, couple elk, a moose for our family,” Albert Green Junior told CTV News from Ontario. “We were fine for seven years, the last couple years we got charged for hunting."
Green said they believed they had the treaty right to hunt for food for their families in Saskatchewan and elsewhere in Canada. "I am an aboriginal person. I don't need a license to hunt for food, anywhere."
Green said they were charged in 2017 and 2018 while hunting in Moosomin Park in southeast Saskatchewan. But those charges were tossed out Wednesday in provincial court, a decision the FSIN said affirms that the treaty right to hunt has no provincial boundaries.
“Our treaties. Our inherited rights are portable,” said FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron. “We are not bound by provincial borders. We have been consistently stating this time and time again.”
The FSIN said the province has a policy that First Nations that are not from treaties that include Saskatchewan, cannot hunt in the province without a license.
The provincial government said it plans on appealing Wednesday's decision and could not comment further as it was before the courts.
