Dakota, Lakota deserve better

Opinion

“Canada itself acknowledged in its apology, ‘words, while important, are hollow if not followed by action. The Dakota apology is not the end — it is the beginning of a long-overdue journey in rebuilding a nation-to-nation relationship between Canada and our People.”

— Birdtail Sioux First Nation Chief Tréchelle Bunn

 

If Canada wants to build a lasting relationship with the Dakota and Lakota First Nations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan following the Trudeau government’s historic apology last summer, the federal government will have to do more than it has to date.

For 162 years, the nine Dakota and Lakota First Nations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were considered refugees in Canada and the formerly British-held territory, an historical mistake that dismissed their territorial ties to the land north of the 49th parallel. These First Nations long argued against that designation, as they considered Canada part of the traditional territory they held before the arrival of European settlers — territory that had once extended down into the United States.

In July 2024, Canada’s then-Crown Indigenous relations minister attempted to right that wrong, and apologized to these First Nations. Yet since that apology was offered — and accepted by the First Nations — Indigenous leaders say there has been little to no followup by the federal government, and a lack of effort to build a new relationship.

Unlike many other First Nations groups, the Dakota and Lakota people have no signed treaties with the Crown. After the Dakota people were forcibly expelled from the United States after The Dakota War of 1862, Birdtail Sioux and Dakota Tipi joined the fellow non-treaty First Nations of Canupawakpa, Sioux Valley and Dakota Plains in securing reservations under Canada’s Indian Act as a result of arrangements made with the federal government and area treaty First Nations.

These tracts of land were secondary to treaty First Nations, relegating non-treaty peoples to smaller land bases, which do not allow enough space for the economic activity that they require in order to become truly self-sufficient.

This is a continuing problem for the Dakota and Lakota, one that was formerly being addressed by the Trudeau government with sit-down negotiations under Section 35 of the Constitution Act with individual communities. The federal government’s apology was one of the outcomes of those negotiations. But Manitoba’s Dakota bands say Canada has not moved forward with ongoing efforts to create new, modern treaties with these bands — or any meaningful dialogue of any kind.

“Since the apology, there has been little political will or effort on the part of Canada in my view,” Sioux Valley Chief Vince Tacan wrote in an op-ed to the Sun last month. “We need a specific process and a mandate to negotiate and address reconciliation of the outstanding treatment as outlined in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation’s claim. To acknowledge wrongdoing and not follow up with concrete steps to work toward meaningful reconciliation renders the apology meaningless.”

“We try to have positive meetings and positive negotiations and roll up our sleeves and get to work, and the federal government has just not been responsive,” Dakota Tipi Chief Dennis Pashe told the Sun last month, the same week as the one-year anniversary of the apology.

“You can’t just say you’re sorry and do nothing,” Canupawakpa Chief Raymond Brown added. “The federal government has not done anything after the apology. It was zero communication.”

We understand that the federal government needs to keep ongoing negotiations out of the public until agreements are finalized. But with Manitoba’s Dakota bands publicly calling into question Canada’s commitment to work with their leadership, it seems clear that the political will to build meaningful reconciliation with these groups is lacking.

The boilerplate statement issued by the federal government in July in response to a request by the Sun to speak with Rebecca Alty, the current Crown-Indigenous Relations minister — “We will continue to work together on shared priorities to advance reconciliation, self-determination and a more prosperous future for the benefit of their communities …” — feels meaningless as a result.

This is unacceptable. For the Dakota and Lakota, that apology was supposed to be a milestone event — a sign of a better future for their peoples. True reconciliation with the Dakota and Lakota requires action in the wake of the 2024 apology, or history will judge it to be empty words.

After having to wait more than 160 years for recognition and an apology from the federal government, the Dakota and Lakota deserve better.