After more than 32 years going through the federal court system, Canada and the Peepeekisis Cree Nation are celebrating the settlement of a legal claim.
Last December the Cree Nation voted in favour of ratifying a $150-million compensation package from the federal government.
The Cree Nation is part of the File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council, which includes 11 First Nations in Treaty 4 territory.
Chief of the Peepeekisis Cree Nation, Francis Dieter, says the File Hills Colony was the site of a social experiment aimed at assimilating Aboriginals into the colonial farming lifestyle.
The Colony was meant to encourage students who graduated from residential school to abandon their traditional ways and permanently adopt a non-Aboriginal homesteading farmer lifestyle.
Graduates included other Aboriginal students from other bands, and they were separated from the original band members, and neither the students nor the original band members were consulted.
The Peepeekisis website says the original members were displaced from their homes.
In 1955, the original band members took legal action but the judge ruled the more recent colony members could maintain full band memberships.
Then in 1986, members submitted a claim which was denied by the federal government and the courts, but the band restarted the legal process in 2017.

The Chief says the Cree Nation recognizes they are divided because of this colony scheme and they must come together.
The money will be used to help the healing, and will include a healing lodge with access to traditional medicine as well as Western practice
The Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, Carolyn Bennett, considers the settlement a significant milestone.
She calls the File Hills Colony a painful chapter in Canada’s interference.