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The claim, the largest being negotiated in Ontario, covers a territory of 36,000 square kilometres in eastern Ontario, including Parliament Hill.

Among other things, the proposed deal would transfer 117,500 acres of Crown land to Algonquin ownership and provide a $300 million settlement.

If successful, it would become the province’s first modern-day, constitutionally protected treaty.

The agreement in principle, which is in the midst of a ratification vote, was denounced Thursday by the chiefs of four Algonquin First Nations, who said the land claim overlaps almost 900,000 acres of their territory.

Lance Haymond, chief of the Kabaowek First Nation, said “the vast majority” of the Algonquins of Ontario “are not Algonquin at all,” but non-natives who claim a loose connection to an Algonquin “root ancestor.” In many cases, those eligible to vote on the land claim deal have not had any intermarriage with Algonquins for more than 200 years, he said.

According to a genealogical analysis done for the chiefs, Trudeau could technically trace his ancestry to an Algonquin woman eight generations ago. The process for eligibility is so convoluted and “ludicrous” that Trudeau could declare himself to be an Algonquin of Ontario, Haymond said.

“The Algonquins of Ontario do not have the moral or legal obligation to negotiate away all the rights of the Algonquin people,” he said.

Haymond said Trudeau’s fledgling government is not to blame for the situation but, given Trudeau’s vow to create a new, respectful, nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations, has an obligation to fix it.