BACK in the 18th century British and French settlers in what is now Canada secured peace with the indigenous inhabitants by negotiating treaties under which the locals agreed to share their land in return for promises of support from the newcomers. This practice continued after Canada became self-governing in 1867. These treaty rights were incorporated into the 1982 constitution. The Supreme Court has since said they impose on the federal government “a duty to consult” the First Nations (as the locals’ descendants prefer to be called) before making any changes that impinge on their treaty rights.

The Assembly of First Nations, which represents about 300,000 people living in 615 different reserves, reckons Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has broken the bargain. In protests over the past month they have blocked roads and railways, staged impromptu dances in shopping malls and chanted outside the office of the prime minister. Theresa Spence, a Cree chief from a troubled reserve in northern Ontario, has taken up residence in a tepee near the parliament buildings in Ottawa, and has refused solid food since December 11th.

The spark for the protests was the government’s omnibus budget bill, approved last month. With a majority of seats in both the House of Commons and the Senate, Mr Harper’s government has grown used to passing legislation without amendment over the objections of the opposition parties. The budget act is a 414-page whopper that changes 64 acts or regulations, including the Indian Act of 1876, while also watering down federal environmental protection. The First Nations revile the Indian Act, a paternalist law that governs many aspects of life on reserves, including education, health care and commerce. But they insist they should be consulted before it, and other laws that affect them, are changed.

“If you want our First Nations to continue to hold up their end of the bargain in terms of our treaty rights, it is very important that our Canadian government not make unilateral decisions, because the treaties were made nation to nation,” Simon Bird, a Cree vice-chief, told a parliamentary committee in November. A small number of chiefs were later stopped from pushing their way into the House of Commons to speak on the budget bill. So they opted to organise demonstrations.

Separately, in November four women in Saskatchewan began a protest over what they saw as the erosion of treaty rights, under the slogan “Idle no More”. This grassroots protest has spread: it is partly directed at the chiefs themselves, who are quarrelsome, divided and, in some cases, seen as being out of touch. Then there is Ms Spence, from the reserve of Attawapiskat. She initially said she would continue her hunger strike until the prime minister and governor-general met First Nations leaders to discuss treaty rights. Those meetings have now happened, but were not to her liking, and she is continuing her protest.

Mr Harper got off to a promising start with the First Nations and Canada’s other aboriginal groups, the mixed-race Métis and the Arctic Inuit, when he issued an apology in June 2008 for the treatment their children had suffered in residential schools (they were separated from their families and often abused). The prime minister promised a new relationship based on “collective reconciliation and fundamental changes”.

That raised hopes that have yet to be fulfilled. The largely unspoken issue behind the protests is that the Indian Act is long overdue for replacement. Its conditions are cumbersome, and make it hard for First Nations to attract outside business and income. It sets up a different, and some would say, inferior, class of citizenship. While some reserves have successful economies, others such as Attawapiskat, have appalling housing and lack running water. The leak of an audit of the Attawapiskat reserve that showed questionable financial practices may have been a crude government effort to discredit Ms Spence. But it was a reminder that not all the C$8 billion ($8 billion) budgeted for aboriginal affairs is well spent.

The failure to update the Indian Act is not the fault of the government alone. Some chiefs have an interest in keeping a broken system going. No national consensus exists on what its replacement should look like. Polls suggest most Canadians do not think the First Nations’ grievances are very important. Many might argue that they would do better to assimilate with the rest of Canada.

But that is less likely to happen now than in the past: exploration for minerals, oil and gas on their territories have given the First Nations leverage over companies and governments. With their constitutional rights to consultation and the accommodation of their interests, the First Nations can tie resource projects up in legal knots for years. These have already ensnared Northern Gateway, a proposed pipeline to carry Albertan oil to the Pacific coast. And it may also happen in the Albertan tar sands themselves.

That is one reason why staying on bad terms with its aboriginal citizens is a foolish choice for a government which wants to boost investment in natural-resource development. Another is that on January 8th a federal court ruled that 200,000 Métis and 400,000 First Nations’ people living outside reserves should also be considered to be Indians under the constitution. If upheld by the Supreme Court, this will cost the federal government money. The protests may be messy and discordant, and involve only a small minority of Canadians. But they cannot be ignored.