This article shows that over the past several generations legal proceedings have proven limited in terms of providing redress of Indigenous grievances. What is needed is a new set of treaties that replace half measures with entrenched rights and self-rule. Through an exploration of the early colonization of Listuguj, the practice of settler squatting, colonial wildlife management, and key Wabanaki court challenges to colonial incursions this article emphasizes the long history of dispossession through colonial defences of dispossession, and Indigenous resistance that led to the Marshall decision.