This First Nation was swindled out of its land — and into a flood zone

The water was quick, unforgiving. 

In a matter of days, the flooding on Peguis First Nation, believed to be the worst the community in Manitoba's Interlake has ever seen, displaced roughly 1,600 people and ravaged hundreds of homes. Peguis has 3,521 members usually living on reserve and 6,504 off-reserve members.

The largest First Nation community in Manitoba is no stranger to flooding — over the last few decades, residents have been chased from their homes by rising waters several times — but that wasn't always the case. 

A few generations ago, the community lived on prime farmland just north of Winnipeg, far from the flood-prone delta on the Fisher River about 160 km north of the capital city where it is today.

And in a way, the story of how they were pushed so far north into Manitoba's Interlake region — a move motivated by racism and propelled by a dubious vote — is the story of Manitoba, said Niigaan Sinclair, a professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.

"You can map Manitoba by the removals of Indigenous peoples. So the story of Peguis is unfortunately not abnormal," said Sinclair, who's also a member of the First Nation.

"But it is particularly awful for myself in that I witness my relatives every year having [a] massive amount of property damage, their livelihoods being consistently under duress, and the fact that it's just impossible to make a way of life … in this territory that we've been forced to live upon."

At the turn of the 20th century, land just northeast of Winnipeg was known as the St. Peter's Reserve — a predecessor to today's Peguis First Nation. Today, the area is home to the city of Selkirk.

The people of St. Peter's were successful farmers, said Karen Froman, an assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg who teaches Indigenous history.

But an idea persisted among settlers that First Nations were incapable of using the land properly.

"There was pressure and resentment on the part of the settler population to remove Indigenous peoples from productive, valuable land," said Froman, who is Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River.

"It's racism, pure and simple."

When the growing nearby community of Selkirk experienced an economic boom, government officials began condemning the reserve as "a drain on the prosperity of the district," she said. 

So in 1907, they devised a scheme for the reserve land to be surrendered — though the people of St. Peter's "utterly opposed it," Froman said.