Blood Tribe reaches settlement with Canada over cattle mismanagment claim

Monday, January 21, 2019  

The Blood Tribe has reached a settlement in one of its trust mismanagement cases in Canada.

If accepted by tribal citizens, the deal will resolve a lawsuit filed in 1998, CBC News reported. The tribe had accused the government of starving its cattle herd and selling off 7,500 animals at less than market value.

"They had absolute power over us, and they could do whatever they wanted," council member Martin Heavy Head told CBC. "In the end, they devastated the whole economy of the Blood reserve, because at that time agriculture was the economy."

The deal is worth $150 million Canadian, or about $120 million in U.S. currency. If approved, each Blood citizen would get a per capita payment of $2,000 -- based on a population of about 12,800, the payments would total about $25.6 million Canadian, or about $19.2 million US.

The remaining funds would be put into a trust for development projects, CBC reported.

The lawsuit arose out of promises made in Treaty 7 of 1877. To account for the loss of the bison economy, the Canadian government promised to supply the tribe with cattle.

The cattle never arrived, according to a separate claim the tribe filed in 2012. Blood citizens ended up selling their own horses and property to acquire the cattle that was the subject of the mismanagement claim, CBC reported.

The tribe, based in the province of Alberta, is part of the historic Blackfoot Confederacy.

Blood Tribe reaches historic $150M settlement with Ottawa over cattle mismanagement (CBC News January 21, 2019)