The Mi?kmaq are a First Nations people of the Northeastern Woodlands, indigenous to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as the northeastern region of Maine. They call their national territory Mi?kma?ki. The nation has a population of about 170,000 Nearly 11,000 members speak Mi?kmaq, an Eastern Algonquian language. Once written in Mi?kmaw hieroglyphic writing, it is now written using most letters of the Latin alphabet. The Mi?kmaq, Maliseet, and Pasamaquoddy nations, whose traditional lands are in the Atlantic region of Canada, signed a series of treaties known as the Covenant Chain of Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown throughout the eighteenth century; the first was signed in 1725, and the last in 1779. The Mi?kmaq maintain that they did not cede or give up their land title or other rights through these Peace and Friendship Treaties. The landmark 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R v Marshall upheld the 1752 Peace and Friendship Treaty "which promised Indigenous Peoples the right to hunt and fish their lands and establish trade." The Mi?kmaw Grand Council is the official authority that engages in consultation with the Canadian federal government and the provincial government of Nova Scotia, as established by the historic August 30, 2010 agreement with the Mi?kmaq Nation, resulting from the Mi?kmaq–Nova Scotia–Canada Tripartite Forum. This collaborative agreement, which includes all the First Nations within the province of Nova Scotia, was the first in Canadian history.