A multibillion dollar Bruce Peninsula land claim, which includes Bruce Peninsula National Park, is about to be heard in a Toronto courtroom 25 years after it was filed.

Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation Chief Greg Nadjiwon said Tuesday that opening statements by the Crown and on behalf of Saugeen Ojibway Nation begin Thursday in a Toronto courtroom, in the action filed in 1994.

The case could take 12 to 16 months, Nadjiwon said. “We’re just in the starting blocks, really,” he said. “We’re still on a journey to dealing with a miscarriage of justice.”

He’s feeling “positive” about the long awaited start of litigation in what a SON treaty document posted online calls an $80 billion compensation claim. The claim also includes an additional $10 billion in punitive damages.

But the trial Thursday won’t be about compensation. Once the merits of the claim are litigated, a separate trial will consider arguments for compensation if needed, SON lawyer Cathy Guirguis said in an interview Tuesday. She added what’s claimed and what’s received are often different things.

Guirguis said the peninsula land claim, and a separate aboriginal title claim being heard together, have novel elements not seen in Canadian courts.

The peninsula land claim asks for compensation for alleged breach of trust in the federal government’s handling of former Saugeen Ojibwa lands since 1854, when Treaty 72 was signed and most of the peninsula was opened to non-aboriginal settlement.

The lawsuit names municipalities South Bruce Peninsula, Northern Bruce Peninsula, Saugeen Shores, Georgian Bluffs and Bruce and Grey counties as defendants, along with the federal and provincial governments. The municipalities are named because they received road and shore road allowances from the Crown without paying for them, Guirguis said.

The Chippewas of Nawash are 60 kilometres north of Owen Sound, at Neyaashiinigmiing or Cape Croker. SON also includes the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation, 30 km west of the city.

SON’s claim seeks the return of the approximately 10 per cent of land still owned by the Crown on the peninsula, including the national park, all lakes and rivers, road and shore allowances, and compensation for loss of use of the land and in lieu of privately held land, according to a SON treaty online newsletter that Guirguis helped prepare in 2016.

The claim does not seek return of privately held land.

Guirguis said both the size of the area claimed and the remedy of returning lands to SON make this a novel case in Canada.

Sun Times reporting in 1995, after statements of defence were filed by the federal and Ontario governments, said the province called for the court to dismiss the land-claim lawsuit.

The provincial statement of defence disputed most of the points raised by the claim. This included a claim that Saugeen Ojibway Nation occupied and owned the peninsula since “time immemorial” as an “organized society.”

The province’s position reported at the time was that some Ojibwa ancestors occupied portions of the peninsula and used it for hunting and fishing beginning about 1700. But from about 1830 large numbers of other native people from various tribes, mostly from the American Midwest, came to the area.

According to the reporting, the province’s statement argued the Crown “had no power” to prevent non-native settlement of the peninsula between 1836 and 1854. It also says “it is futile and idle to speculate” on the position local First Nation people would be in today if the 1854 treaty had not been signed.

But “the treaty provided and continues to provide them with a secure land and financial base,” it added.

An additional claim, filed in 2003 and merged with the original claim, seeks aboriginal title to portions of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay waterbeds, except for those islands that were the subject of treaties. It also excludes privately owned lands. This covers the full traditional territory from Tobermory to Goderich to Collingwood and the portions of waters offshore of these lands, Guirguis said.

“Seeking aboriginal title to parts of Georgian Bay and parts of Lake Huron, that is entirely novel; that hasn’t been recognized in Canada yet. A claim as far as we know has not been brought in Canada yet,” she said.

If successful, this aboriginal title claim would give SON control of the surface and exclusive fishing rights and over who uses those lands, the newsletter says. It also seeks government revenues received from the land.

SON will argue Treaty 72 wasn’t fair to the First Nations.

It was negotiated because the Crown stated it was unable to protect the Saugeen Peninsula, as the Bruce Peninsula was then known, from European settlers.

The Crown said that if SON allowed settlement on most of the peninsula, the Crown would set aside reserves for the First Nations. The SON was to get the proceeds of the sale of the land.

SON claims the Crown accepted a duty to protect the Saugeen Peninsula for the SON by signing Treaty 72, which the court action alleges it breached.

SON had already signed Treaty 45 ½ in 1836, in which the Crown assured SON that if First Nations allowed the land in the southern part of its traditional territory to be opened for settlement, “the Crown would protect the Peninsula for them forever,” the newsletter says.