Mcknight proved to be great friend to First Nations

On a cold February night in 1982, I drove across the windswept prairie to the town or Eatonia in west central Saskatchewan. I was a vice-chief of the FSIN, and I held the portfolio for Treaty Land Entitlement.

At the time, we had to work with the so-called 76 formula that was negotiated in 1976. The agreement placed Crown land on the table for selection by some 27 First Nations who were owed land because of a shortfall when the reserve boundaries were first surveyed.

The little community hall was packed by mainly ranchers and farmers. If their pasture was selected and turned over to a reserve, they would lose their grazing rights and their livelihood would be threatened.

This was the issue across the province, and I had no answer for it; the federal and provincial governments had negotiated this unworkable settlement.

The night wore on with no solution. The local member of Parliament was one of the speakers and when it looked like all was lost, he asked the assembly for a resolution to take to government to make funding available to purchase land instead of acquiring Crown land.

The MP was Bill Mcknight. A decade later, as a cabinet minister in the Mulroney government, he would sign an agreement to make close to a billion dollars available to purchase land to pay the debt.

Sadly, we lost our good friend last Friday. Bill Mcknight passed at age 79. He spent 14 years as the member of Parliament for Kindersley-lloydminster and held numerous cabinet posts, including Indian Affairs, Labour, National Defence, Agriculture and Energy, Mines and Resources. He was also the minister of Western Diversification.

Despite his many cabinet posts, Saskatchewan First Nations remained close to his heart. In 1991, when the negotiations began in earnest for the new TLE agreement, he and former minister of Indian Affairs, Tom Siddon, the then minister of Indian Affairs, buttonholed Saskatchewan Premier Grant Devine at a first ministers’ conference and, as the story goes, told him that since he wasn’t going to win the next election, he should start thinking about his legacy.

Devine went on to support a framework agreement for TLE. In September 1992, Prime Minister Mulroney and Premier Roy Romanow, along with the 27 chiefs that had land entitlement, signed the historic agreement at Wanuskewin.

Bill retired from politics but his interest and support for First Nations continued. In 2007, he was appointed as treaty commissioner for Saskatchewan.

He was a strong proponent of the treaties and the treaty relationship that existed between First Nations and the rest of Canada. Part of his legacy was to create a K to 12 school curriculum based on the treaties in Saskatchewan and Canada.

Bill Mcknight changed the face of Saskatchewan. Today there is close to one and a half million new acres of First Nations land, including very profitable urban reserves. Across the province there are First Nations gas stations on First Nations land, and four of the six casinos are on TLE land. The TLE process brought us to the market areas and in the process created a new economy for us.

TLE also injected close to three quarters of a billion dollars into the Saskatchewan economy and was a lifeline for many farmers, allowing them to sell and retire.

Bill was the face of the other Saskatchewan. Since the trial following the death of Colten Boushie, Saskatchewan has been portrayed as a province out of step with reality, harbouring racist tendencies. Bill represented the other side of that description. He was a decent man who had empathy for others. He and his wife fostered two children from my reserve and he never mentioned or exploited this relationship, even when he was minister of Indian Affairs.

The Muskeg Lake band council recognized him as an honorary chief and gave him the name “Eagle Feather.”

He also received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Saskatchewan, and in 2015 he received the Saskatchewan Order of Merit.

Bill Mcknight played many roles and had many accolades, but most of all he was our dear friend.