[Witness spoke in Ojibwa]
[English]
I have come to you from Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is Treaty 1 territory. I am really honoured to have the opportunity to speak here today to the parliamentary committee.
We have a situation here in our territory where our Treaty 1 community of seven first nations—and I'll speak more specifically on my community—live in a territory that has been essentially developed without any sort of consideration for my people, our rights or our right to hunt, fish or trap—ultimately, to fish in our territory—given the fact that there's been major development within Treaty 1.
I'm not sure if the committee members are aware of our territory. It stretches from the U.S. border into the Lake of the Woods, which is southeastern Manitoba, into Brandon in western Manitoba, and into the interlake region between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba.
These lands have been agreed upon since August 3, 1871. Currently, the majority of our first nations are also treaty land entitlement communities. We've come together to work on a parcel of land known as the former Kapyong barracks, which is now reserve and known as Naawi-Oodena. That property is approximately 109 acres and was a former barracks site. It was in dispute with our first nations for the past 19 years, going on 20 years. We just recently had that property turned to reserve.
I always like to describe my territory as being overly developed. To describe the situation that we're in, we are in a situation where our children are being taught where not to hunt versus how to hunt. It becomes a really challenging situation when we start to look at how we do accomplish things like getting our land back to our first nation in terms of restitution.
We have been through this process now for 25 years. We've actually seen the process of treaty land entitlement lapse in terms of the current agreement and the work that we've been doing.
For us, it's been a really challenging situation. We have the majority of the municipalities now situated within Treaty 1. The majority of Manitoba's population lives within our territory. We have industries like agriculture that have essentially left our land base...down to nil. Hydro transmission lines that come in to feed a metropolis like Winnipeg have occupied other properties as well. We have Crown lands, but they are very rare in our territory and even those Crown lands are being leased to farmers.
Essentially, for us, it's become a very critical state where we are. We get to watch all of these videos and all of these wonderful projects that are happening in other territories. I can't speak on behalf of the northern Cree, Inuit, Dene or anything like that, but I always see these nice projects about how they're restoring their environment and how they're taking care of the polar bear, caribou and whatnot. In our case, here in southern Manitoba, we have no lands left to even protect.
We are now in this process of reclamation of land that includes municipal property, municipal lands and private lands that we have to purchase and we have to go through a process, which is left for us to navigate on our own. Municipal officials really feel that the process itself that's been outlined is a bit of an intrusive one, which I can probably appreciate from their perspective, given the fact that we've lived through the opposite as well.
With that being said, our communities are left basically to navigate these disputes—whether it be with a third party interest or with a local municipality—without any sort of mechanism in place to help us settle disputes that are long standing. I actually just got off the phone this morning with the provincial government about a road right-of-way that was identified in 2009. They told us today that it's actually no longer required. It took 14 years for that to happen.
I'm also sitting with municipalities where we're still having municipal servicing discussions that have been going on now for about 16 years.
Again, this is unacceptable. I would assume that if the federal or provincial government required any of these lands for X or Y or Z, these things would have a process where we could actually go for a dispute.
In the case of the Kapyong barracks, we were successful. It wasn't until after lengthy court battles and after disputes with Canada that they finally sat down and signed a comprehensive settlement agreement with our communities. We now have our reserve. Now we own it. Of course, having that land back is a significant step forward for our communities. It provides an excellent opportunity for us to really explore the economic opportunities that should have been there from day one.
This dispute started in 2002. I came to the table in 2004, as a young person at that time, but now we're—