WHO: The city, province and Shoal Lake 40, and also Ottawa through a parallel but separate agreement with Shoal Lake 40.
WHAT: Not a compensation package, but a three-party "environmental management agreement," with Shoal Lake 40 responsible for protecting water quality as long as the city and province would support Shoal Lake 40 in creating economic development opportunities.
The tripartite agreement took effect once a parallel agreement was signed between the federal government and Shoal Lake 40 in 1990.
Under that parallel agreement, Ottawa threw in $2.5 million to build a sewage system, but water is still untreated.
A statement in the tripartite agreement signed by Manitoba and the City of Winnipeg:
"We shall make every effort to promote economic development beneficial to the band in the Shoal Lake area."
WHERE THE DEAL SITS:
Shoal Lake wants to implement the tripartite pact's economic development clause. Chief Erwin Redsky said the band has yet to see any permanent full-time jobs resulting from the agreement since it was signed 18 years ago.
The tripartite working group, with two representatives each from the city, Shoal Lake and Manitoba, has been meeting regularly in the years since the deal was signed.
A trust fund with $3 million from Manitoba and $3 million from city has generated more than $9 million toward Shoal Lake's infrastructure dreams, but without a road and no economic prospects, the community is forced to dip into its trust fund without any hope of generating more income.
History:
1In 1919, the aqueduct to carry clean lake water directly into Winnipeg was finished. It is built over an old native burial ground. Between 1912-1919, the original Ojibwa village, located at the mouth of the Falcon River at Shoal Lake, was displaced and moved to a man-made island. A parcel of the band's traditional land, 3,000 acres, became City of Winnipeg property and split the reserve into three separate parcels.
Ottawa selected a peninsula across the lake from the old village as the site of the Shoal Lake 40 reserve.
Government officials relocated the village and ordered the diversion canal to be dug across nearby narrows, effectively creating an island and isolating the reserve.
"Here we have a southern band that's living in a northern isolated situation," said former City of Winnipeg councillor and former Wolseley MLA Harold Taylor, now general manager of East-Regional Development. Taylor is helping to broker an alliance between the RM of Reynolds and Shoal Lake. He described the history of Shoal Lake as "shocking."
Sources: Shoal Lake's Man-Made Island Power Point presentation; the Manitoba Historical Society website; the tripartite and parallel agreements