159. Similarly, aboriginal practices, traditions and customs protected under s. 35(1) should be characterized by referring to the fundamental purposes for which aboriginal rights were entrenched in the Constitution Act, 1982. As I have already noted elsewhere, s. 35(1) constitutionalizes the common law doctrine of aboriginal rights which recognizes aboriginal interests arising out of the historic occupation and use of ancestral lands by natives. This, in my view, is how the notion of "integral part of a distinctive aboriginal culture" should be contemplated. The "distinctive aboriginal culture" must be taken to refer to the reality that, despite British sovereignty, aboriginal people were the original organized society occupying and using Canadian lands: Calder v. Attorney-General of British Columbia, supra, at p. 328, per Judson J., and Guerin, supra, at p. 379, per Dickson J. (as he then was).
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