Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday signed a C$1.3 billion ($1 billion) deal, one of the largest of its kind, to settle an age-old land dispute with the public. Native Blackfoot.
“We came together today to right a wrong of the past,” Trudeau said in a speech on the traditional territory of the Siksika First Nation in western Canada.
In 1910, the Canadian government seized about half of the reservation land in the Indian Nation’s province of Alberta to use it to acquire resources and sell it to settlers.
The allocation of the lands took place even in the presence of an agreement signed 30 years ago, which guaranteed the ownership to the indigenous community of about 46,000 hectares in the western meadows area.
Trudeau said the Canadian government had “dishonored” by taking society’s “most productive agricultural and mineral-rich lands for the benefit of others.”
In response, Canadian Native Affairs Minister Marc Miller noted that Siksika has lost some of the wealth derived from these lands and access to many holy sites.
In this sense, he argued, it was important to recognize “disproportionate negotiations and land transfers”.
“While this agreement doesn’t make up for the past, we hope it will lead to a better and brighter future for this generation and beyond,” he added.
“This land demand, yes, 1.3 billion, is a huge amount of money. It will never be the same. But we have to move forward,” he said.
Miller added that the community is beginning to see a resurgence of their culture and traditions, for example, as well as the Blackfoot language currently used on local road signs.
source: Noticias
