Saskatchewan drainage associations are now equipped with a legal skeleton with which to flesh out local Indian land claims deals.
Members of the Saskatchewan Conservation and Development Association voted at their annual convention to accept a “model agreement.”
“It sure gives us a little more direction,” said Rose Valley farmer Eugene Zagrodney, whose drainage association is heading into negotiations with the Yellow Quill Indian band.
Indian bands across Saskatchewan are buying land with money they received in the Treaty Land Entitlement agreement. Some land being bought contains ditches and dams built by drainage associations.
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Drainage associations can control systems on private land through easements and the right to charge landowners for necessary maintenance.
But when private land is given reserve status, drainage associations lose the right to go on the land or charge fees to the owners.
Because of this, drainage associations have refused to agree to Indian-purchased land becoming reserve land until they make agreements that ensure the drainage systems are maintained.
So far no associations have made deals because they’ve been waiting for the SCDA to come up with the model agreement.
“Now we can sit down, finally,” said Zagrodney.
Local needs considered
The model agreement lays out the universal principles all drainage associations need to enshrine. But each association’s specific agreement will have to be different in order to address local needs.
Zagrodney, a SCDA director, said the association has moved quickly to build a model agreement. Governments and Indian bands worked on their framework agreement for Indian land claims for 35 years, Zagrodney said, but the SCDA only found out 18 months ago that it had the right to protect its members’ interests.
SCDA president Jim Hupka said having a legal structure will make the governments, and Indian bands the associations have to deal with, treat them with more respect.
“They thought we were just a bunch of country bumpkins from the ditches.”
