Ontario Government Takes Several First Nations to Court to Try to Stop Their Bid for Shared Decision-Making Authority over their Homeland Territories: This on the heels of Bills 5 and C-5 pushing back reconciliation and decolonization for 40 years

Press Release

TORONTO, Dec. 17, 2025 – A major hearing on December 18 and 19 in Toronto (Ontario Superior Court) will determine whether Ontario succeeds in its efforts to crush the case brought by several First Nations who belong to Treaty 9. This historic case is to end colonialism – to have the court order that the Treaty guaranteed the First Nations’ continued right to govern over their territories, resulting in a right of co-jurisdiction with the Crown today. Colonialism is the unilateral jurisdiction seized by the Crown over lands and peoples already governing those lands.

Ontario brought a motion to strike the First Nations’ case at an early stage before any evidence or legal arguments can be made. Treaty 9 covers 2/3 of the dry land mass of Ontario and is one of 11 numbered treaties that encompass almost all the lands from the Ontario-Quebec border to the Alberta/BC border. What happens here will have a profound effect across the country and on Indigenous Peoples everywhere.

“Our case, that we launched two years ago and that Ontario is trying to snuff out, is to show what was really agreed to in the Treaty,” says Donny Morris, Chief of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug. “The archival records are clear – the Crown never got us to agree that they could take control of it all and in fact the Crown never told us that is what they intended. Canada’s and Ontario’s actions to take what we never agreed they could take, and to hide this effort, are what in all other contexts we would call a fraud.”

For further information contact: Kate Kempton, Senior Counsel, Woodward and Company Lawyers LLP, Email: kkempton@woodwardandcompany.com, Phone: 416-571-6838, Chief Donny Morris, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Email: donny.morris@ki-btl.ca

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