More than $45 million is generated from agriculture on the Blood Indian reserve near Lethbridge, but band members see only $7 million of that total.
“Something is wrong with this picture,” Elliot Fox told an aboriginal land conference at the University of Saskatchewan June 23. “We’re not profiting or benefiting as much as we should.”
Fox is the director of lands management on Canada’s largest reserve, with more than 350,000 acres.
Just five percent of the 1,200 Blood band members living on the reserve are farming. Those who do farm, raise livestock and forages. Non-natives who lease land from the band account for most of its agricultural production.
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Fox detailed a number of projects the band has launched to increase agricultural production and economic development on the reserve.
“Self-sufficiency will come through the management of our resources,” he said.
These include increased irrigation, timothy production for export, specialty crop production, oil and gas development and wind power. The band would also like to cut trees on its smaller reserve site near the United States border, harvesting timber once every five to 10 years.
The band is working with the U of S agriculture college to explore traditional land uses. It is also reintroducing the swift fox to its grasslands, said Fox, who noted outfitting and ecotourism contribute to the local economy.
He said this work would be assisted by jobs in agriculture and by a legal land audit. He would like to see band members trained to create detailed site maps of natural resources.
Elliot said agricultural production has been stalled on the reserve for many reasons. Individual families cannot use land for collateral to buy necessary machinery because the band owns it.
The federal government also limited the Blood tribe’s agricultural production in the 1930s, he said.
