Ottawa tells Saskatchewan Cree Nation it’s ‘deeply sorry’ for assimilative ‘colony scheme’

The federal authorities has made a nationwide apology to a Saskatchewan First Nation neighborhood for a scheme that breached treaty and fiduciary agreements by making a farm colony that took over the nation’s land and contributed to the assimilation of Indigenous folks.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller is on the Peepeekisis Cree Nation on the reserve, simply northwest of Balcarres, Sask., to ship the apology on behalf of the federal authorities.

“On behalf of Canada, I apologize for these actions,” Miller stated. “They triggered nice hurt to your neighborhood, your language and your tradition, and for this we’re deeply sorry,”

Miller stated that not many Canadians know the historical past of the File Hills Colony Scheme and “we should acknowledge that.”

Peepeekisis Chief Francis Dieter says he welcomes the apology from the federal government.

“Right this moment is one step of many steps in the direction of reconciliation,” Dieter stated.

The Cree nation beforehand agreed to a $150-million federal settlement in August 2021 that lined Canada’s breach of obligations, together with transferring and settling residential college graduates onto the nation’s land in 1898, in addition to promoting off “prime agricultural Peepeekisis reserve lands,” in keeping with the federal authorities launch. Each had been completed with out the Cree nation’s consent.

The settlement allowed the nation, about 110 kilometres northeast of Regina, the choice to amass almost as a lot as 18,720 acres of land to be added to its reserve land.

Dieter says he hopes the funds from the settlement will assist tackle the social ills and be used to buy much more land for the neighborhood and improvement initiatives.

In keeping with the nation’s web site, the File Hills Colony aimed to create “an agrarian First Nation and [assimilate] Aboriginals into the colonial farming way of life.”

“The Colony was meant to encourage pupils who graduated from residential college to desert conventional methods of life and completely undertake a non-Aboriginal homesteading farmer way of life,” the web site reads.

“By delivering this formal apology on behalf of the federal government of Canada we’re acknowledging the wrongs of the previous and we’re taking one other step towards reconciliation and a renewed nation-to-nation relationship,” Miller stated.