Separate Concurring Opinion 8 G.R. No. 224469 This acknowledgment of the aborigines' relationship with the land was reiterated in Akiba v. Commonwealth of Australia. 30 The High Court of Australia ruled that the Commonwealth Fisheries and the Queensland Fisheries laws, which both required licensing for fishing, did not extinguish the relationship of the aboriginal people to the land, nor extinguish the native title bundle of rights. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Canada's opinion in R v. Sappier; R v. Gray, 31 is enlightening. In that case, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the acquittal of three (3) members of the Maliseet and Mi 'kmaq indigenous groups accused of possession and cutting of timber for domestic uses. In finding that wood was integral to the culture of indigenous tribes, the Supreme Court of Canada explained the necessity of adopting a liberal approach in the determination of the existence of a claimed aboriginal right. Despite the lack of direct evidence establishing a nexus between the harvest of wood to each of the tribe's customs and cultural practices, the Court nevertheless inferred that such aboriginal right to log trees exists because it was undertaken for the tribe's survival. It resolved that in order to establish an aboriginal right, a specific activity need not be shown to be a defining feature of a specific indigenous community. It suffices that the practice or act is integral to the distinctive culture-of the aboriginal peoples. The Court also explained that claimed aboriginal right must be viewed in light of modem-day circumstances so as to give effect to their Constitutional policy of protecting the distinctive cultures of aboriginal people, viz: Although the nature of the practice which founds the aboriginal right claim must be considered in the context of the pre-contact distinctive culture of the particular aboriginal community, the nature of the right must be determined in light of present-day circumstances. As McLachlin C.J. explained in R. v. Marshall, "[l]ogical evolution means the same sort of activity, carried on in the modern economy by modern means." It is the practice, along with its associated uses, which must be allowed to evolve. The right to harvest wood for the construction of temporary shelters must be allowed to evolve into a right to harvest wood by modern means to be used in the construction of a modern dwelling. Any other conclusion would freeze the right in its pre-contact form. Before this Court, the Crown submitted that "[l]arge permanent dwellings, constructed from multidimensional wood, obtained by modem methods of forest extraction and milling of lumber, cannot resonate as a Maliseet aboriginal right, or as a proper application of the logical 30 31 [2013] HCA 33, 07 August 2013, <http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgibin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/20l3/33.html> (visited 16 Augbst 2020). 2006 SCC 54, < https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2329/index.do?q=R.+v.+Sappier> (visited 16 August 2020).