The putús recorded the Mi'kmaq Grand Council meetings by stories and the creation of wampum belts, a kind of visual history, and dealt with the treaties with other native tribes and non-native groups.

The Grand Council met on a small island in the Bras d'Or lake in Cape Breton called Mniku.

The district council was charged with performing all the duties of any independent and free government by enacting laws, justice, apportioning fishing and hunting grounds, making war, suing for peace, etc.

There are now approximately 35 reserves scattered across Nova Scotia, all allotted to and administered by thirteen First Nation Mi'kmaq communities established since 1958–1959.

In the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, one of the key recommendations was to re-form precolonial polities as an overarching body to connect physically- and socially-isolated "reserves" (called "First Nations").

Both the RCAP and the Supreme Court explicitly call for and justify a continuing role for Grand Council jurisdiction over certain cultural, social, environmental or other matters that would reasonably fall within the treaty laws.

Interpretation and advocacy under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which both Canada and the US have signed, are other powers claimed by the modern Grand Council, as evidenced in the SWN case in which it asserted a clear jurisdiction over hydraulic fracturing and other below-ground activities.

The events in Rexton resulted in widespread sympathy demonstrations across North America, again bolstering the claim of the Grand Council to have formal authority.