Alberta will hold a vote this fall on whether to pursue a referendum on separation from Canada. The situation might seem comical if it weren’t so dangerous — both for the majority of Albertans who don’t support separation and for Indigenous treaty people, whom Premier Danielle Smith has accused of undermining the democratic process.

When the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Blackfoot Confederacy won a joint court case earlier this month, effectively arguing that a separatist referendum would contravene their treaty rights, it prevented Smith and her government from putting separation directly on the ballot.

In light of Justice Shaina Leonard’s decision, Alberta separatists and their enablers, including Smith, are now being forced to reckon with the inconvenient reality that Indigenous Peoples have inherent and treaty rights that predate the formation of Alberta itself. These rights transcend Alberta’s borders.

Read more: As Canada is threatened, it’s urgent to revisit Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood

Settler colonial borders

Treaties 4, 6, 8 and 10 cross the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. And now that Smith has targeted Section 35(1) of Canada’s Constitution Act, which recognizes and affirms the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people in Canada, her finger-pointing is cause for even greater concern.

Read more: Treaty 4 brings up hard questions like how did ‘Crown land’ come to be?

In a recent televised address to the province, Smith called the court’s application of treaty rights a legal error that her government will appeal. She also called........

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