 Aboriginal Rights and Reconciliation 
In the wake of the research carried out by Sylvie Vincent in support of Aboriginal claims and on the representation of Aboriginal people, this article aims to identify some issues surrounding the use of history in the legal assessment of Aboriginal rights in Canada. The Hamilton Health Sciences Corp. v. D.H. decision regarding refusal of biomedical treatment for an Indigenous child with leukemia to resort to traditional medicine will serve as an example here. This decision illustrates the extent to which the historical representations entered into evidence, according to legal criteria, can accentuate a symbolic distance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens even when they facilitate the recognition of asserted ancestral rights in the short term. This ultimately hinders achieving the objective of reconciliation advocated by the Canadian state.