Doug Cuthand: New Indigenous minister cleans up 137-year-old Sask. mess – The Star Phoenix
The $37m settlement was to compensate 14 First Nations that lost income, political and human rights as the result of an arbitrary decision.
This week the new minister of Indigenous Affairs made a visit to Saskatchewan and announced the agreed upon settlement of $37 million to the so-called rebel bands.
It was Gary Anandasangaree’s first trip out of the Ottawa bubble since he was first appointed to cabinet. His first job was to clean up a mess that had been created 137 years earlier, when the west was still the Northwest Territories and 14 First Nations lost their leadership and political rights.
The settlement was to compensate 14 First Nations who lost their income and human rights as the result of an arbitrary decision from one Indian Affairs bureaucrat.
Following the events of 1885, the repression came down on the First Nations in Treaty 6 and Treaty 4, mainly in Saskatchewan. Hayter Reed, the former Indian Agent at Battleford who was promoted to Indian Commissioner, was tasked with the job of reporting which First Nations remained loyal and which ones were disloyal. His word was the law, and there was no appeal process. Reed was called “Iron Heart” by the First Nations people in the Battleford agency because of his parsimony.
