Grainswest - Fall 2024

Fall 2024 grainswest.com 37 ith the second-largest reserve landbase in Canada and 23 per cent of its 210,080 Prairie acres earmarked for agricultural use, the Siksika Nation appears uniquely positioned to thrive in the farm sector. This is not the case. Though farming has taken place on Siksika since the turn of the previous century, only a handful of families have been able to make a go of it as independent operators. To understand why, we must unpack the policies and practices that form the historical and legal relationship between First Nations people and the Government of Canada. “It goes back to the settler society’s idea of assimilating the Blackfoot people,” said Stewart Breaker, one of those few on-reserve farmers who has established a significant operation on Siksika land. “The idea was to utilize agriculture as an assimilation tool for the adults as a way of making them citizens of Canada.” Breaker possesses formidable knowledge about the history of agriculture as it relates to the Blackfoot people. This is in no small part because of his own family’s story. His grandfather was among the first individuals in the area to successfully transition to farming. He’s also well-versed in contemporary scholarship and suggests those interested in the subject read historian Sarah Carter’s book, Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy . The University of Alberta professor corrects the old notion that on-reserve agriculture in Western Canada failed to take root in any significant measure due to cultural incompatibility with farming on the part of First Nations people. In his own telling of the story, Breaker corroborates Carter’s thesis that government policy undermined the development of Indigenous agriculture. Asked how his family became farmers, Breaker begins the narrative with the assimilation polices introduced under the Indian Act in 1876. Under it, children were placed in residential schools and trained for agriculture and trades. This was intended to “take the Indian out of the child.” From there, Breaker recounts the effect of Siksika’s 1910 land surrender, which saw the federal government take back nearly 115,000 acres of the reserve’s territory, much of it prime agricultural or mineral-rich land. “They took half our land on the south side and gave it to settlers—all around Gleichen, Arrowwood, Mossleigh and north of Milo,” said Breaker. “And then they put in irrigation south of us so we couldn’t access it. We didn’t have irrigation until the 1970s.” The Siksika Irrigation Land Corporation and Siksika Farms companies manage 5,000 irrigated acres and 3,700 dryland acres of reserve land, respectively. A TOUGH START Ironically, this land surrender marked the start of Siksika farming activity. The government offered remuneration for the lost territory that allowed for some economic development that included farming. It should be noted undue pressure to Robert Breaker (left) and brother Stewart take time out from har- vest. They farm about 1,200 acres of wheat, canola, barley and oats.