Completed Mediations - Reports Released

20/10/2005

Keeseekoowenin First Nation [1906 land claim] – August 2005

This claim concerns a portion of IR 61A known to the First Nation as the "1906 lands," acquired by the Department of Indian Affairs in exchange for land surrendered in Riding Mountain IR 61, which is the Keeseekoowenin Band’s main reserve. In 1906, these lands were wrongly included in a description of the Riding Mountain Forest Reserve established by the Dominion Forest Reserves Act. In 1935, Canada forcibly removed the First Nation from the 1906 lands when Riding Mountain National Park was established.

Negotiations began in 1997, but it wasn’t until the April 2002 assignment of Canada’s newest negotiation team that the Commission’s mediation unit became involved. At the request of the negotiation table, the ICC agreed to participate as mediator-facilitator. Using a "shuttle mediation" approach (the mediator-facilitator meets with the negotiating parties individually to ascertain their positions and to determine whether a negotiated settlement is possible), the Commission was able to help the parties get past their difficulties and by March 2003 the table had agreed on the general principles of a settlement agreement.

The parties spent the next ten months discussing issues relating to the settlement and in September 2004 there was a ceremony at the Keeseekoowenin Reserve to initial the agreement. The referendum vote was held in November 2004 and a large majority of the band members voted to accept the settlement. The Minister of Indian Affairs signed the agreement, providing $6,999,900.00 in compensation to the Band in March 2005.

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