A 25-year-old briefing note for a former federal minister of Indian Affairs was among the matters raised Wednesday in the lawsuit against Ottawa by the Ross River Dena Council.

Also raised was a sworn statement provided in 2011 by longtime federal employee Shari Borgford in response to an official information request from Ross River regarding questions about meetings and correspondence going back to the late 1980s and ’90s.

There were questions of a second sworn statement made by Borgford in 2013 correcting the sworn evidence she provided in 2011.

Ross River is suing Ottawa for failing to live up to what it claims is a 150-year-old constitutional obligation to address the aboriginal rights and title of the First Nation before giving away any of its traditional territory.

The First Nation is one of three Yukon First Nations that does not have a final land claim agreement.

Ottawa maintains if it did indeed have any constitutional obligations to address the interests of the First Nation, it fulfilled them through years of attempting to negotiate a land claim agreement with Ross River beginning in 1973.

Ross River, on the other hand, maintains Ottawa has not been honourable in its dealing with the First Nation.

It has not lived up to the honour of the Crown the Supreme Court of Canada has come to expect from territorial, provincial and federal governments when they deal with First Nations.

Central to Ross River’s argument is its belief the Umbrella Final Agreement (UFA), the template for negotiating land claim agreements in the Yukon, was never properly ratified as required by the UFA itself.

The Yukon Supreme Court trial on whether the federal government acted honourably in its dealing with Ross River began Wednesday and is scheduled to go six days.

Borgford was the only witness to be called. Lawyers for both sides are relying mostly on documents and paper records compiled over the years to make their arguments. There are boxes and boxes – binders and binders – of evidence for Justice Leigh Gower to consider.

Borgford was on the stand for less than an hour Wednesday, beginning with questions from Ross River lawyer Stephen Walsh.

Under cross-examination by federal lawyer Suzanne Duncan, Borgford agreed that responding to the questions from Ross River in February 2011 fell to her only because she was the acting regional director of Indian and Northern Affairs at the time.

She testified she did not have any personal knowledge nor involvement in the correspondence and briefing notes she was asked to provide information about, as she was never involved with land claim negotiations.

In fact, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she was a financial administrator with the department, and didn’t even share the same office as the federal land claim team until they moved into the Elijah Smith Building in 1992.

Borgford testified the misinformation provided in the sworn statement of 2011 was corrected in 2013, long after she’d returned to her regular job with the department.

In the 2011 sworn statement, Borgford said it was her understanding there had been a meeting in June 1989 at which the parties to the land claim negotiations had agreed on a process to ratify the UFA.

She understood there was further agreement to the ratification process at a meeting on Oct. 25,1991, she testified.

But in the 2013 sworn statement, Borgford noted the information she provided in the 2011 statement was incorrect, and that there was no record of a meeting having ever been held on Oct. 25, 1991.

And upon questioning by Walsh, she acknowledged she did not know directly of any evidence produced by the federal government of a meeting or the dates of a meeting where the process for ratifying the UFA had been agreed to.

The requirement for ratifying the UFA is set out in the agreement.

It says: “The parties to the Umbrella Final Agreement shall negotiate the processes for ratification of the Umbrella Final Agreement and the ratification of those processes shall be sought at the same time as ratification of the Umbrella Final Agreement.”

Ross River contends the process for ratifying the UFA was never negotiated and agreed to as was required, and therefore is not legal.

Walsh told Justice Gower this morning he can hardly wait for the federal lawyer to show how the process of ratification was agreed to and carried out, because Canada has been unable to provide any proof so far.

Ross River maintains Ottawa has known all along there was a problem with ratification. It further maintains it believes evidence of the problem is contained in a memorandum to the federal cabinet from a federal lawyer in April 1993.

On the court file is a letter dated Feb. 21, 2005 to then federal Indian Affairs minister Andy Scott from former Kaska tribal chief Hammond Dick.

It says: “We are confident that Mr. Burnett’s memorandum will confirm what the Kaska have been saying since 1993, that being the UFA has never been properly ratified in accordance with the terms that were negotiated, agreed to and set out in section 2.2.8 of the UFA.”

But Ottawa refuses to release the memorandum, citing lawyer-client privilege.

If there was a problem and Ottawa knew about it as Ross River believes, the First Nation maintains Ottawa’s conduct in attempting to reach a settlement with Ross River could hardly be described as honourable.

Ross River is seeking compensation for lands that were alienated over the last 150 years which include the Faro mine site that once served as the cornerstone of the territory’s economy.