Troy Bishler began to panic. Granum’s farmer, Alta., Was in the middle of a calving season with 180 pairs of cows and he was running out of water.
“Maybe we have a week left in the dugout. There really is no Plan B after that, “Bishler told Global News on April 27. “Either this water goes down the canal and starts to fill the dugout, or I don’t know. We cannot move this livestock in the middle of the calving period to another water source. It won’t work. “
Bishler grows farms in parts of southern Alberta where it doesn’t rain much. Agricultural operations supporting more than 200,000 acres of land and 750,000 head of livestock rely on irrigation supplied by the Lethbridge North Irrigation Region. The water diverts from the Old Man River through the gate of the Piykani National Reserve Canal.
On April 12, the leadership of the Piikani nation ordered that this gate be closed.
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“The river is very important to the Piikani nation,” said Piikani nation adviser Riel Hule. “We understand the downstream impacts of farmers and other people who need access to water, but (also) we are very cautious about our river. This is sacred to us. “
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Hall says the act of disobedience was carefully considered. Twenty years after signing a water rights agreement between Piikani and the federal and provincial governments, Houle says much has changed. On the one hand, the Peikani diversion dam is aging and planning for new infrastructure is under way.
“The province wants to come and build a new gutter and the Piikani nation wants to be a part of it, because this is a big project that is happening on our land.
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After five years of writing to the province with environmental and economic problems, closing the tap was the last attempt to get the government’s attention. And it happened. Two weeks after the gate closed, farm water levels fell dangerously low. The province has signed an agreement with Piikani, promising to work together on the water issue to move forward.
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“Drunkards need to take a seat at the table to make sure that any work we do on an overflow or infrastructure system protects the environment in the long run,” Alberta’s Minister of the Environment and Parks Jason Nixon told Global News a day after the agreement. was signed.
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The canal gate reopened Tuesday night.
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“We are finally moving in the right direction, but honestly, it took up to the (eleventh) hour for them to come and talk to the Piikani nation, and that was something we were not happy about,” Hole said.
Ken Coates, a professor of public policy at the University of Saskatchewan, is studying indigenous land disputes.
“From the point of view of the indigenous population, this is the source of much of their frustration; when we are expelled, when it is a problem for our communities, nothing happens, but when it is a problem for a community that is not indigenous, it is a matter of crisis or urgency, ”he said. So this is a really good example of the long-term and even modern consequences of failing to resolve these historical disputes. “
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However, for the hundreds of disputes between top nations and groups and governments across Canada, Coates says infrastructure-disrupting protests are extremely rare. In most cases, he says, local groups take these battles to court, where they often win.
“Then the question is, ‘Why don’t we solve them faster?’ If you look closely across Canada, there have been a number of settlements in the last six to eight months.
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Coates attributes this change to procedural changes made by former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Reibold, the first indigenous woman to hold the cabinet.
“She is working really hard to speed up the dispute settlement process, to go through the stupidity of going through multiple levels of courts and to find agreements through mediation through negotiation. The Canadian government has now said, “Yes, let’s get these things off the table.”
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Jason Nixon says reconciliation is also a priority for the Alberta government.
“We will continue to work very hard with Piikani for a long-term partnership on many of the issues they have raised. This is in line with the overall vision of our government, which is to work in partnership with the communities of the first nation and to make sure that we can share long-term prosperity together.
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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