When a group of local Innu showed up recently at an exclusive, private fishing camp on the Moisie River in northern Quebec, it had more than fishing in mind.

In 27 motorboats, the Innu zoomed past the camp, a remote collection of rustic buildings and expensive vacation homes, to a rocky island where they disembarked and planted the green-and-white flag of their Innu band.

Then they read a declaration to the camp’s manager, Yvan Letourneau, demanding that the Province of Quebec return their ancestral lands and their rights to the river and give them control of the club.

The demand was just one of many claims being asserted by Canada’s myriad indigenous groups who were pushed off their lands and onto reserves in the 19th and 20th centuries by British, and then Canadian, policies and laws.