The relationship between Aboriginal Canadians and the Crown has been heavily defined by the effects of settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance.

[2] The doctrine allowed Catholic European explorers to claim non-Christian lands for their monarch based on papal bulls.

[3] The doctrine was applied to the Americas when Pope Alexander VI issued Inter caetera in 1493, giving Spain title to "discoveries" in the New World.

[3] Spain, however, claimed only the Pacific coast of what is today Canada and, in 1789, established just the settlements of Santa Cruz de Nuca and Fort San Miguel,[4] both of which were abandoned six years later.

[6] The court, 10 years later, in Tsilhqot'in Nation v. British Columbia, rejected all Crown arguments for Aboriginal title extinguishment.

Within the document, both sides agreed that treaties were the most effective legal way for Indigenous peoples to release control of their land.

[9] As time passed, non-Indigenous settlers became eager to establish their own communities and extract resources to sell, forgoing the guidelines set out in the Proclamation.

On appeal of St Catharines Milling and Lumber Co v R in 1888, the imperial Privy Council found native land rights were derived from the Royal Proclamation of 1763.

[10] In 1973, Calder v British Columbia (Attorney General), the Supreme Court of Canada found that the Indigenous peoples of Canada held an aboriginal title to their land, which was independent of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and was derived from the fact that, "when the settlers came, the Indians were there, organized in societies and occupying the land as their forefathers had done for centuries".

This Act made it so that Indigenous men, if they wanted to could become a part of the European-Canadian society, they were to give up many different aspects of their culture.

The European-Canadian definition of being civilized entailed being able to speak and write in either English or French, and to be as similar to a white man as possible so that there were no discernible differences.

In the first wave, the treaties were key in advancing European settlement across the Prairie regions as well as the development of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

During this time, Canada introduced the Indian Act extending its control over the First Nations to education, government and legal rights.

[17] One of the underlying motivations in the act was to enforce a policy of assimilation, to prohibit Indigenous peoples from practicing their own cultural, political, and spiritual beliefs.

The values that were taught in residential schools were brought to Canada from the colonial settlers who made up a majority of the Canadian population at this time.

While at residential schools, students were no longer allowed to speak their own language or acknowledge their culture or heritage without the threat of punishment.

[22] The establishment of residential schools is a direct link to colonial settlers and the values that they brought, when they began to populate what we know today as Canada.

[26] Indigenous women have reported to having found out that their fallopian tubes had been tied without their consent or were coerced into agreeing to it by doctors who assured them it was reversible.

[28] Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) is an ongoing issue that gained awareness through the efforts of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) when it called for a national inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

[46] Historians investigate the broader complexities of genocides, including long-term processes and various motives, without strict legal definitions.

[60][61] In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrétien proposed the White Paper, which recommended abolishing the Indian Act to extend full citizenship to Indigenous peoples after the Hawthorn report concluded Indigenous peoples were "citizens minus."

Tk'emlupsemc, French-Canadian, and Ukrainian historian Sarah Nickel argued scholars marking the White Paper as a turning point in pan-Indigenous political mobilization obfuscates both local responses and longer histories of Indigenous struggles by unfairly centering one settler policy.

It is a commemorative art installation using vamps, the tops of moccasins, as a way to represent the unfinished lives of the Indigenous women who are murdered or missing.

One such art installation is Every One by Cannupa Hanska Luger, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation who is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian heritage.

[63][64] This art installation, which was on display at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, is a massive piece made from ceramic beads that make up the face of an Indigenous woman.

[65] The Wetʼsuwetʼen First Nation, located in the northeast of British Columbia's central, interior region, has long been engaged in an ongoing dispute with the Canadian state over its rights and land.

In the 1997 case, Delgamuukw v British Columbia, which expanded on the earlier Calder v British Columbia (AG) and helped codify the ideas that Aboriginal title existed prior to, and could exist outside of, Canadian sovereignty, the court determined that infringements against Aboriginal title by the Canadian state were possible.