How a cabin fuelled a court action over Ontario Métis harvesting rights
CBC
The Ontario government just ordered the dismantling of a cabin at the heart of a court challenge over Métis harvesting rights — but the move isn't enough to resolve the argument over Indigenous rights and traditional territories.
The story begins sometime in 2018, when Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) member Marc Descoteaux started building a cabin on Pond Lake in the Temagami area.
The province's Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) authorized the building of this hunting structure on Crown land because of Descoteaux's Indigenous heritage.
The area is part of the Métis Nation of Ontario's traditional harvesting territory, but it's also on the traditional territory of Temagami First Nation and Teme-Augama Anishnabai and neither were consulted before it was built.
In the years that followed, the two Anishnaabe groups repeatedly asked the province and the Métis nation to clarify how and why this cabin had been authorized, without success.
This is how the case landed before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in November 2023.
According to Teme-Augama Anishnabai and Temagami First Nation, the province initially told them to communicate with the MNO to address concerns about cabins being built in "shared territories."
In the correspondence that followed, the First Nations argued there are no Métis communities with established rights in their territory.
The Ontario government responded by sharing historic community reports produced by the Métis nation, and declined to offer documents that would explain how the province assessed the evidence presented in those reports.
Earlier this month, the MNR reached out to the two Temagami groups to inform them a letter had been sent to Descoteaux requesting the removal of the cabin and the restoration of the site to its original state.
The MNR said it reached that decision after receiving a letter from the MNO stating it does not support the cabin.
"It is the ministry's position that, absent community support, there is no authority for a cabin at the location in question," it read.
In a press release, the Métis nation says it never authorized the building of the cabin in the first place.
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