Kukpi7 Fred Robbins and Esk'etemc community members at Vert Lake.
Kukpi7 Fred Robbins and Esk'etemc community members at Vert Lake. A First Nation in B.C.'s Interior has received more than $147 million from the federal government after more than 20 years of fighting for the acknowledgement of its water rights.
According to the Esk'etemc Nation, all the water from Vert Lake, southeast of the reserve, was promised to the Esk'etemc for irrigation as part of a reserve land agreement. The First Nation started digging in the 1890s, but after two years of work and just one kilometre away from completion, it was told it had to stop.guest host Doug Herbert. "I mean, after all that effort to be told you can't continue, when I talked to the elders, they said it was completely devastating.
"One can't help but think that with the social conditions at that time, the small reserves, and the lack of resources if the community would have had irrigated land, they could have grown crops," archaeologist and anthropologist Beth Bedard said in a news release.
"This is a release … of a lot of stress, and it's really been nothing but good news for our community, and we're very glad that we got to the end of this."Now, he and his membership will work together to decide how to use that money.
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