To be successful and enduring, a government must firmly establish its own legitimacy as the sole sovereign power within its boundaries. Anything else brings chaos. So why are Canadian governments so meekly accepting of the ongoing erosion of their authority by the courts? Taking a close look at a recent B.C. Supreme Court case that threatens to demolish the 164-year-old legal foundation of the province’s mining industry, Peter Best examines the practical and legal implications of this court-ordered diminution of Canada’s national sovereignty at the expense of the rapidly growing and vaguely defined notion of Indigenous sovereignty.