Resolving land claims key to reconciliation

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2016 (3216 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the very first day the Manitoba Free Press (the precursor to the Winnipeg Free Press) published Nov. 30, 1872, the front-page story outlined the Dominion Lands Act. In the style of the day, the entire act was laid out in great detail, taking up the full front and half of the second page of the paper. The act granted settlers legal authority over a portion of land for a small fee so they could homestead.

Near the very end of that story was a small section with the headline: “The Half-Breed Grant,” which spelled out that every “half-breed” and “the child of every half-breed” under the Manitoba Act were entitled to a total of 1.4 million acres of land in Manitoba. Even then, aboriginal land claims were relegated to secondary status — an afterthought on the page of history as this province was being settled by homesteaders. To this day, that entitlement has never been granted. Last Tuesday, Ottawa and the Manitoba Métis Federation finally came to an agreement on how the two will negotiate an end to this dispute.

This follows a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 2013 that determined government delays and ineptitude, as well as land speculation and swindlers, blocked thousands of Métis children from receiving the land promised by the federal government when Manitoba entered Confederation. At that time, the court called the land-claim negotiations an “ongoing rift in the national fabric” that threatens reconciliation and constitutional harmony.

It is expected the outcome of discussions with Ottawa will result in the creation of a trust fund that could be put aside for education bursaries, venture capital for Métis-run businesses or home-ownership programs for Manitoba Métis.

Land-claims negotiations for aboriginal people have been ongoing for more than four decades. In 1969, a lawsuit was launched for aboriginal title claimed by the Nisga’a in British Columbia. The subsequent Supreme Court decision in 1973 was the first time the Canadian legal system acknowledged the existence of aboriginal title to land, and it forced the federal government to set up a lands-claim process.

However, it has been a very slow and expensive process. Under the previous Conservative government, in an attempt to clear the backlog of land claims, Ottawa had taken a heavy-handed approach. At the same time, there was worry that competing land claims in Manitoba would pit the Métis against First Nations in the treaty land-entitlement process.

Tuesday’s agreement signed between Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand and Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett may suggest the new government is forging ahead in settling claims as part of its commitment to reconciliation. While it could still take several years before the claim is settled, there appears to be a light at the end of the land-claims tunnel.

This is important. If reconciliation is to be taken seriously, the Canadian government has to actively resolve outstanding land claims that, to this point, have benefited the settler, but not the peoples whose land the settler claimed.

One hundred and forty-six years later.

» Winnipeg Free Press