Peguis gets $118-million land claim settlement from Ottawa

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/10/2010 (5568 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA paid out one of Canada’s largest single land claim settlement this week, with the transfer of $118 million to Peguis First Nation, it was confirmed late yesterday.

Peguis officials plan to release a formal announcement today in an effort to alert as many of the nearly 9,000 registered band members in a broad media splash.

“We need to reach out to all our membership,” the source said, adding that everyone registered with the band will be entitled to $1,000 cash bonus, with elders to receive $1,500.

There are 8,900 registered band members, including approximately 700 elders.

The settlement is the biggest compensation of its kind and it caps a particularly bitter chapter in First Nations history going back a century.

A spokeswoman from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada said Ottawa may also have a comment to release later today.

In 1907, the Peguis band was stripped of fertile farm lands at the Red River community of St. Peters near Selkirk and forced to move on to scrub land 200 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

Peguis leaders waged a legal war for decades to have the illegal land surrender officially recognized and then to win compensation from Ottawa.

Nothing about the deal came easy.

After nearly 11 years of intense negotiations, it took two separate referendums for Peguis members to vote in favour of the deal in 2009.

Even then, the controversy didn’t end, and a last- minute court challenge threatened to derail it.

In May, former Peguis chief Louis Stevenson lost his bid to challenge the historic deal, when the Federal Court dismissed his application for a judicial review. Stevenson contended the referendum process was fraught with corruption. He also contended the deal was too small and that his rival, current chief Glenn Hudson, had let Ottawa off the hook for millions of dollars.

Reaction will likely be mixed over next several days as members debate whether the band settled for second best. The band is burdened with a $20 million debt and floods this year in Peguis have added to the First Nation’s financial woes.

Plans call for 75 per cent of the settlement, roughly $90 million, to be channeled directly into a trust fund to yield about $6 million a year for community development.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca