Compensation for First Nations veterans draws near

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Another Remembrance Day has come and gone without an agreement for compensation for First Nation war veterans, but Grand Chief Howard Anderson of the Saskatchewan First Nations War Veterans Association is optimistic an agreement will be reached soon.

An announcement about compensation for First Nations veterans was expected by Remembrance Day, but the delay doesn't concern Anderson.

"Nothing happens on time," he said, adding that most of the federal Cabinet is on side with giving the veterans compensation. It's just a matter of determining how much that compensation will be.

Anderson is scheduled to travel to Ottawa with Assembly of First Nations' vice-chief for Saskatchewan, Perry Bellegarde, and National Chief Matthew Coon Come to make a presentation to the Senate subcommittee on veterans affairs in early December.

"And I've got to present what happened to the veterans. Why? Because I'm the one that knows it," said Anderson, himself a veteran of the Second World War.

"They've got the political side. Which is fine. And you have to have the political side. And I've got how we were treated."

How they were treated was that many of the First Nations veterans returning home after the war were denied the same compensation-including money, land grants and funding for education and training-given to their non-Native compatriots. After years of fighting for equal compensation for First Nations veterans, Anderson is optimistic that compensation will soon be forthcoming.

"It's moving in the right direction, and I think it's going to move fairly fast. It's a matter of how much. We're asking for one hell of a pile of money," Anderson said.

What they are asking for is $425,000 for each veteran. That figure was arrived at, Anderson explained, by looking at how much each veteran could have hoped to have made if they'd been able to sell the land they should have received as compensation.

"So this is approximately what it would cost about 10 years ago . . .. At retiring time, that might have been what you could have sold it for," Anderson explained.

"We are very optimistic, really," he reiterated. "And the veterans are getting old. We've got to do something fast. And we are trying to do it as quickly as possible. And now, that's what 's holding us up, is the government saying, 'how much?'"