(Siksika) Justin Trudeau traveled Thursday to an Indigenous community east of Calgary, Alta., to sign a historic land claims settlement that Ottawa says is one of the largest of its kind in Canada.
Posted at 6:17 p.m.
The federal government says the settlement takes us back more than a century to when Canada broke its promises in the “Blackfoot Treaty.”
Ottawa then granted itself nearly half of the Siksika Nation’s reserve lands, including some of its agricultural lands, to sell to newcomers who came to settle in the region.
The agreement signed Thursday provides $1.3 billion in compensation to the Siksika Nation to resolve outstanding land claims, which include about 46,500 hectares of the Siksika reservation and certain mineral rights taken by Canada.
The Siksika Nation website says each member will receive $20,000 in July as part of the settlement.
Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Marc Miller participated in the signing ceremony Thursday with Chief Ouray Crowfoot, members of the band council and the community.
“We are gathered today to right a wrong of the past,” said Mr. Trudeau during the ceremony. We have come together to give each other a chance to start rebuilding trust between us, nation to nation. »
Chief Crowfoot said the settlement does not make up for past wrongs, but it will make a difference in people’s lives.
“Canada must stop using the word ‘reconciliation’. You will never reconcile, you will never achieve this, he said. This land claim—$1.3 billion is a lot of money—will never bring back everything that was there before. But we have to move forward. What the 1.3 billion can do is provide opportunity, opportunities that we didn’t have before.
“I see the tide turning for Siksika […] I see us becoming a prosperous nation. »
– With information from Colette Derworiz in Calgary