Indigenous Jurisdiction

In Canada, many First Nations are governed by two legislative/political/administrative levels. 

For comparison, this is perhaps not unlike multi-level legislative/political/administrative arrangements in 'mainstream' Canadian society. For example, the distinction between municipal and provincial governments.  Or Federal and Provincial.

This distinction is pointed out in a recent article "Corporations Don't Seem to Understand Indigenous Jurisdiction."

The article explicitly points out that this Indigenous two-level governance has been recognized by The Supreme Court of Canada.  But the existence of this jurisdictional fact seems invariably to be ignored, either out of ignorance or willful neglect, by resource development firms and 'mainstream' governments.

In many Indigenous settings, the traditional chiefs have overall jurisdiction over traditional territory and their population; elected chiefs (a role created by The Indian Act) are like municipal governments, and have jurisdiction over (often small) 'reserves' created under The Indian Act.  Just as is often the case in conventional shared jurisdiction, Companies need to deal with both levels of governance.

What is so hard to understand?  Unless one does not want to.