people and their unique rights is not derived from legislation. Aboriginal people had formed distinct self-governing societies long before Europeans arrived in this country. The treaty-making process was just one manner of recognizing that existence. Aboriginal governments, and the right of Aboriginal people to them, were an aspect of the original title which Aboriginal people had and, in one form or another, continue to hold. Aboriginal people cannot be said to have surrendered that right by voluntarily entering into treaties with the Crown. We believe that the treaty-making process can be seen as a confirmation of their right to a collective existence into the future as a people. That right, we believe, has been captured and now finds protection in section 35 of the Constitution of Canada. To the extent that Aboriginal rights of Aboriginal people have been confirmed in other Canadian or British laws, it has another form of recognition, but the state of the law in Canada, as we understand it, is that Aboriginal people and their rights did not depend upon non-Aboriginal recognition in order to exist. The same principle applies, in our view, to both Indian and Metis people, the latter of whom derive Aboriginal rights under the Constitution from their Aboriginal ancestry. While Metis people may have no rights under the Indian Act , that is irrelevant, in our view, to the question of whether they have any right to self-determination. The recent (in terms of Aboriginal history) enactment of Canada?s Indian Act , with