Saskatoon Saskatchewan - The First Nations' lot in Canada has been to sit on the sidelines and watch as governments and corporations get rich on our lands and resources.
 
We are spectators.
 
And in the case of the province versus the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP), we wish a pox on both their houses.
 
Both parties are equally to blame for exploiting our resources and giving us little or nothing in return.
 
CP is suing the province, maintaining it doesn't have to pay taxes and wants $341 million returned.
 
This brings up the privileged history of the CP and the company shareholders.
 
The settlement of the Canadian west is portrayed as European settlers jumping off trains and taming the vast swath of land.
 
Instead, it was a feeding frenzy by large corporations that made a lot of money selling land and resources.
 
After the treaties were negotiated and our people placed on reserves, the surveyors came west and marked out a grid that covered 200 million acres in the so-called fertile belt.
 
This piece of land went from the American border to the tree line and from the Rocky Mountains to southern Manitoba.
 
This was the largest surveyed grid in the world, and it was created on land obtained from the treaties with First Nations.
 
In addition to the CP, the Hudson's Bay Company sold Rupert's Land to Canada for 300,000 pounds.
 
It also received seven million acres of land in the fertile belt, plus some 50,000 acres of land surrounding its trading posts.
 
The sale of Rupert's Land occurred before the treaties were signed, so technically, Canada didn't have any right consummating the deal and collecting the cash, much less giving away land they had yet to acquire.
 
But it was the CP that got the best sweetheart deal of all the railways, including those south of the border.
 
The Americans put a stop to land grants to railway companies before the MacDonald government in Canada.
 
The CP received so much land that running a railway was a side hustle compared to its land sales.
 
In the areas where the CP selected land, it took every odd numbered section, leaving the even numbered ones for homesteads.
 
It sold the surface, but kept the mineral rights.
 
When we were buying land for our Treaty Land entitlement, we had to have the mineral rights and we were always running into mineral rights that were owned by CP.
 
Also, out of the blue, we would find coal rights in the name of the CP even though there was no coal to be found.
 
It apparently kept the rights for coal separately because it was fuel for steam locomotives.
 
In any event, CP created Canadian Pacific Oil and Gas in 1958 and in 1971 merged with Del Rio and became Pan Canadian Oil and Gas.
 
In 2002, it was merged with Alberta Oil and Gas and become Encana.
 
The Hudson's Bay Company also managed to benefit from its holdings through land sales and resource development.
 
It created Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas in 1981 and it was sold to Dome Petroleum and later gobbled up by AMOCO.
 
Over the years, the lands and resources of western Canada have made a lot of money for shareholders, most of whom didn't even live in the west.
 
But making money was a one-way street.
 
While the shareholders were busy banking their dividends, our people were pushed aside, not allowed to select reserve land next to the railways right-of-way and languished in poverty under a repressive colonial regime that cost us dearly.
 
While millions of acres were given to HBC and CP, the First Nations got less than two million acres for reserve land.
 
Later, about half of this would be clawed back by land surrenders and seizures.
 
Lands were sold to speculators, or some were set aside for soldier settlement.
 
We were denied the freedom to farm competitively, and if we were lucky enough to have oil and gas, the royalties were placed in trust accounts controlled by the Department of Indian Affairs.
 
At every turn we were denied the right to build an economy.
 
Now the CP has the unmitigated gall to want to return to its tax-free status.
 
Someone needs to remind CP that God helps the needy not the greedy.
 
Author unknown.