This week marks the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories. Before the court was established, justice was administered for the most part by lay magistrates. Serious cases were most often tried in Alberta.

When Justice Sissons became the first judge of the Court, he said that justice would be taken to every man's door and he meant what he said. Before he retired, Justice Sissons traveled an estimated 275,000 miles by plane and dogsled. The practice of the court going to the people so they can see justice being done and accused can be tried by a jury of their peers remains to this day.

Justice Sissons and his successor, Justice Morrow, were at the forefront of what is today an increased awareness of aboriginal rights in Canada.

• • Perhaps the most important decision from this era, which significantly affected political aspirations of aboriginal people in the NWT, was made in 1973 by Justice Morrow in the Paulette case. A number of chiefs had applied to lodge a caveat with the registrar of land titles claiming an interest in an area of land comprising 400,000 square miles in the western part of the territory. They argued that treaties 8 and 11 did not extinguish aboriginal rights in relation to land. Justice Morrow agreed and so ruled. Although the decision was overturned in the Supreme Court of Canada, the decision had significant political consequences for the federal government and aboriginal people. Prior to this
• • case, the federal government had claimed that aboriginal rights to land had been extinguished by the signing of treaties 8 and 11. Now the federal government accepted that there were serious moral and legal questions that cast doubt on their position and there began a perceptive and positive shift in the federal approach to aboriginal land claims.
• • In 1961, despite fierce opposition by the federal government, Justice Sissons held that a marriage that took place in accordance with Inuit custom was a valid marriage in the eyes of the law. Later in 1965, he held that Inuit and Dene custom adoptions were valid adoptions recognized by the law.
• • On the question of our political evolution, in the 1999 case of Morin v. the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Justice Vertes concluded that the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories is "a separate and distinct legal entity" and not simply an "organ" of the federal government. This was an important decision that recognized the establishment of a fully responsible government in the Northwest Territories.

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Clearly, the Supreme Court has been an important institution in recognizing the rights of aboriginal people and the constitutional status of the Northwest Territories.

We are honoured to welcome a number of our former judges and lawyers back to Yellowknife to attend a conference this week celebrating this important anniversary. As well, legal counsel and judges joined us from Nunavut and the Yukon.

Mr. Speaker, a number of them are in the gallery today and I will hopefully be able to introduce them later.

The Sissons-Morrow carving collection is on display all this month at the Yellowknife Courthouse. It is representative of the most important cases from the first two decades of the Supreme Court. I would like to invite the Members of this House to visit our courthouse to view the collection. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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