In December 2005, a Canadian federal court justice dismissed a six-hundred-million-dollar claim by the Samson Cree related to alleged mismanagement of its energy royalties. In newspaper interviews, a lawyer for the Samson Cree expressed disbelief that the justice discounted the testimony of our elders and followed essentially the written word of the white man. Interestingly, 120 years before the justice dismissed the Samson Cree case, the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs actively sought Indian testimony, believing that oral accounts were more accurate than its own written records.