Cheated: The Laurier Liberals and the Theft of First Nations Reserve Land

You won't find the Ocean Man and Pheasant Rump reserves on a map of southeastern Saskatchewan. In 1901, the two Nakoda bands reluctantly surrendered the seventy square miles granted to them under treaty. It's just one of more than two dozen surrenders aggressively pursued by the Laurier Liberal government over a fifteen-year period. One in five acres was taken from First Nations.



This confiscation was justified on the grounds that prairie bands had too much land and that it would be better u...