This decision has been criticized for both its treatment of the oral evidence and for its tone. Chief Justice McEachern described pre-contact life of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en as "nasty, brutish, and short." He didn't recognize pre-contact "institutions" and instead said that "they more likely acted as they did because of survival instincts." He was "unable to accept adaawk, kungax and oral traditions as reliable bases for detailed history but they could confirm findings based on other admissible evidence." He described the position of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en as "idyllic" and "romantic". The Canadian Anthropology Society said the judgement "gratuitously dismisses scientific evidence, is laced with ethnocentric bias and is rooted in the colonial belief that white society is inherently superior." Chief Justice Lamer, writing for the majority at the Supreme Court of Canada, acknowledged that Chief Justice McEachern did not have the benefit of the reasons from "R v Van der Peet", which says "courts must not undervalue the evidence presented by aboriginal claimants simply because that evidence does not conform precisely with the evidentiary standards in other contexts."