Feds need to live up to farming promises in western numbered treaties: Cuthand – APTN News

May 25, 2023

Cree columnist Doug Cuthand says the federal government isn’t living up to the numbered treaties on the Prairies.

The treaties, signed in 1876, were supposed to be about peace, friendship, working together and farming.

“It guarantees everybody who wants to start farming will get a hoe, and a rake and a pitchfork and a whole bunch of stuff like that,” said Cuthand, a columnist with the Star Phoenix, on the season finale of Nation to Nation. “And the band would be eligible for a team of oxen and some horses and boar and piglets and all kinds of stuff.”

But the promises of tools to work the land never came.

With all the recent talk of reconciliation, Cuthand suggests the federal government should start repairing the spirit and intent of the treaties. As an example he used some land for sale in Saskatchewan known as the Pfeiffer pastures.

Read More: https://www.aptnnews.ca/nation-to-nation/feds-need-to-live-up-to-farming-promises-in-western-numbered-treaties-cuthand/