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Delayed cheques lead to shouting match on reserve

By: Alexandra Paul

Posted: 12/14/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson: addresses wrong (TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES) Photo Store

IT took nearly 100 years of fighting for justice. Now members of Peguis First Nation must wait just a little longer as a clerical error has delayed payments on a long-standing debt.

New cheques are in the mail, after errors on cheques Friday triggered a shouting match and marred a community ceremony staged to celebrate an historic $126-million land settlement.

"It was bittersweet," Chief Glenn Hudson said. "The ceremony in Peguis on Friday was to honour our people, our ancestors. It was to give thanks for receiving this settlement."

A total of $10.6 million is set aside for cheques to every man, woman and child on the 8,000-plus membership list for the First Nation. Elders receive $1,500. Everyone else is entitled to $1,000.

The payment is part of the $126-million federal settlement to compensate for a 1907 illegal land surrender of the St. Peter's Reserve at East Selkirk.

Instead, the event to give thanks for the victory degenerated into a yelling match between supporters of rival leadership factions over who was to blame for errors in addresses on the cheques, he said.

A total of 1,800 cheques were pulled after the errors were discovered Friday just as some cheques were to be handed out.

"Unfortunately, it became a political issue. There were people there, not supporters of mine, who were making a big scene about it," Hudson said.

Peguis hired a law firm to try to keep the settlement separate from the fractious political scene on the reserve, located 220 kilometres north of Winnipeg, the chief said.

The Leah Ballantyne Law Corp. was asked to compile more than 8,000 band members' names, addresses and treaty numbers in a list for entitlement payments.

Once the first 1,800 cheques were printed, the band went ahead with plans to mail most out and have another 200 to be picked up the day of the celebration.

No one noticed there was a printing error in the 200 cheques until it was too late.

"The law firm was required to pull all the cheques so none of those cheques could be released," Hudson said.

The error was computer-related.

"Even my cheque was wrong," Hudson said. "The name was right. The amount was right but it was the address that was wrong."

Over the weekend, the new cheques were printed.

There are still another 3,000 people who have not come forward with their addresses, the chief said.

Band member James Harper said he got his cheque Friday, but he's upset because people were treated rudely at the event.

"This lawyer comes over the (public address) system and says they're going through all the cheques," Harper said.

"People are asking when they're going to get them and she says, 'I'm not the post office, I don't know.'"

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 14, 2010 A6

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