Prentice to reopen land claim negotiations with Lubicon First Nation

Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has rebooted talks with anorthern aboriginal band that has been seeking a land claim foralmost 80 years.

"I felt it was an important place to start," Prentice saidThursday after meeting with the chief and council of the Lubicon
Lake Cree in Little Buffalo. "I think there's some unfinishedbusiness there."

Prentice, who was treated to a bowl of moose nose stew by his"gracious" hosts, said the band and the province will opennegotiations on a land settlement, workforce training and education.

"The provincial government has not had that degree of dialoguewith Lubicon First Nation in many, many, many years," Prenticesaid. "I think both the chief and I were pleased with the progressthat we made today."

Tensions simmering for decades

The Lubicon band was missed by federal treaty-makers in the early1900s and the band claims it has never given up rights to any of itsnorthern territory. The Lubicon gained an international profile in1988, when the New York Times called it "the tribe Canada forgot."

The dispute has simmered unresolved ever since.

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Over the years, band members blockaded logging roads andwell-site access into what they called their territory.

International sympathizers helped the tiny Cree band winconcessions from the Japanese multinational pulp-and-paper companyDaishowa-Marubeni with a boycott the company said cost it about $20million. The boycott was lifted in 1998 after Daishowa promised notto log on the disputed land.

A settlement was nearly reached in 1988 called the GrimshawAccord, but broke down after a later disagreement with Ottawa overband membership. The ongoing uncertainty helped create politicaltensions in the community, which culminated in the February 2013election of Billy Joe Laboucan as chief, with whom Prentice metThursday.

Laboucan's rival, Bernard Ominayak, still leads a group ofLubicon Cree and refers to himself as the traditional chief.

• Lubicon election ends dispute over chief
• Lubicon chief collected $1.5M, while community had no running water: audit

Laboucan said treaty negotiations with Ottawa resumed over thelast 18 months and are proceeding along the lines Ominayak initiallylaid out. The parties are discussing about 250 square kilometres ofland, economic development funding, resource ownership andcompensation for resources already extracted.

"I have to give credit to the former chief," said Laboucan.

Treaty will take time to reach, says chief

Prentice said the land covered in the Grimshaw Accord, which wasspearheaded by former Alberta premier Don Getty, has been set asideand remains in trust for the Lubicon.

"The land aspect of it should be reasonably straightforward,"he said.

Laboucan said a full treaty settlement will take about two yearsto reach.

Prentice said he hopes progress on training and education canbegin much sooner.

"Our discussion today was about how we work together to focus onthe job skills and employment opportunities for people in thiscommunity and the educational challenges they're facing in thecommunity."

Little Buffalo remains one of the poorest communities in Alberta.Laboucan said its school is falling apart and it wasn't untilrecently that the first 26 provincially funded homes with runningwater were put up.

Fully three-quarters of the community's adult population simplyisn't in the workforce, said Prentice, who's now the first premierto actually meet with the Lubicon since Getty and may be the firstever to visit Little Buffalo.

Laboucan called the visit "wonderful" and said it was animportant step in a long-running fight "a dream that's almost 80years old."