First Nations Could 170-year wait for justice finally be over?

Only 25 miles of road O lie between the northern Ontario town of Terrace Bay and Pays Plat First Nation. But when Raymond Goodchild was growing up, that distance spanned worlds.

- Leyland Cecco

In the 1960s, industry thrived in Terrace Bay and jobs were plentiful.

Roads and pavements were paved, and homes had electric lighting.

Goodchild's home in Pays Plat, meanwhile, was a tarpaper shack without electricity or running water. He was taunted at school and often picked through the local dump for anything useful. He only had bedsheets after enlisting in the Canadian military. "When I had my daughter, I said a prayer: 'Let me give her a better life'," he says.

More than 170 years after a treaty with the crown promised Goodchild's ancestors a share of the region's riches, his people have instead been left struggling with illness, poverty and housing shortages - a legacy of the colonial project first envisioned by the British government and continued after Canada gained independence.

Now, with the possibility of Canada's largest-ever litigation award on the horizon, a court's attempt to compensate the nations for unpaid rent could have farreaching consequences.

Goodchild, 67, says some things have improved: running water and electricity are now common. But poverty has persisted in Pays Plat, exacerbated by drug abuse and mental illness. "They talk about truth and reconciliation. I'm still waiting," says the former chief and decorated military veteran. "I'm going to be patient.

" In 1850, a collection of Anishinaabe nations on the shores of Lakes Huron and Superior signed a treaty with the British crown covering 35,700 sq miles of land. Known as the Robinson Treaties for the fur trader William Robinson, who negotiated on behalf of the crown, the agreements acknowledged Indigenous communities' rights to hunt and fish. Robinson included an "augmentation clause" that would increase annual payments "from time to time" as the land generated more wealth - "if and when" payments could be made without a loss for the crown.