The agreement will eventually give back to the Algonquins about 36,000 square kilometers (almost 22,370 square miles) which stretches from Canada's capital city of Ottawa to North Bay, and large parts of the Ottawa Valley. Parliament Hill and privately-owned land won't be included. Algonquin girls dance in celebration.
Algonquin girls dance in celebration.
OTTAWA, ON-The Canadian government, along with the government of the Province of Ontario, signed a historic agreement with the Algonquins of Ontario to give back large sections of eastern Ontario to the First Nations people along with as much as $300 million.
The Honorable Carolyn Bennett, Indigenous Affairs Minister and her Ontario counterpart, David Zimmer signed the agreement which eventually will give back to the Algonquins about 36,000 square kilometers (almost 22,370 square miles) which stretches from Canada's capital city of Ottawa to North Bay, and large parts of the Ottawa Valley, including Parliament Hill.
This signing in principle (meaning the final details have yet to be worked out), means that it could be as long as five more years of negotiations to complete the deal. It was stressed by Minister Bennett that "all land in private hands would be left untouched, and that the bulk of the land the Algonquins would receive would be government owned.
Included in this land deal is CFB Rockcliffe Park, a closed military base that's located in a prosperous neighborhood of Ottawa. However, no new First Nations will be created as part of this treaty.
This treaty negotiation has been in the process for 24 years while the Algonquins have claimed the land for more than 250 years. According to them, the Canadian government "never extinguished their titled to the land with the signing of a treaty."
The federal minister stated that this historic agreement is the first modern-day treaty in Ontario and it could serve as a model for negotiations with other First Nations people across the country.
"We were once wealthy, we lived well off the land," stated Kirby Whiteduck, the chief of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan, the largest First Nations reserve in the territory. "Then we were begging for a piece of land. The agreement-in-principle is more of a weight off our shoulders, not so much of a celebration."
One of the questions during the negotiations was "Who is an Algonquin?" According to the CBC, chiefs have "previously raised red flags about the loose criteria used to determine eligibility, saying it lumps in many non-Indigenous peoples who do not have a recent familial tie to First Nations peoples who identify as Algonquin."
"It's a point of contention," stated Whiteduck, "and it's something we're currently working on right now. There is some guidance in law, and jurisprudence that we're trying to look at very closely," he said.
Whiteduck estimates there could be between 7,000 and 8,000 people who would be considered beneficiaries.
Robert Potts, the senior negotiator for the Algonquin claim, stated "you have to demonstrate you have a social or cultural connection to one of these communities. I can assure you a tremendous amount of effort and thought is going into this," he told the CBC.
