Below is a posted letter from Chief Terrance Nelson as posted on Reclamation site.
Sept 2, 2007
As I stated before, we have 75 acres of land converted to reserve status at the Winnnipeg Perimeter Highway and Highway Six. We got the land converted on June 13 2007 by then Minister of Indian Affairs Jim Prentice.
We will build businesses, starting with a gas station, convenience store,and a VLT center with 30 gaming machines.
In 2008, we will build a Car Dealership and a huge Pharmacy. Also in line will be a warehouse as well as office space.
Further, in the next few years, we will build big box stores including hardware, food, and the retail industry. A hotel and bingo hall are also in the plans.
We are planning an $80 million dollar "holocaust" musuem to model on the book "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown. Doug Cardinal is the architect of this project. As Chairman of nine members of Dakota Ojibway Council of Chiefs, I want to ensure that the story of the North American indigenous people is told without compromise or apologies. The Dakota deserve no less than the Jewish people. If Canada can commit $100 dollars to the Jewish Holocaust Musuem in Winnipeg, we should be building a museum without government money.
They took our land - in Roseau's case - ten million acres in southern Manitoba. They shut down our hugely successful farming operations in the 1940s and 1950s because our people out-competed the white farmers. For decades they took our children by force to be taught in residential schools that God came on a boat to North America in 1492.
In 1993, they sent police snipers into our reservation fields to ensure that our people would not have casinos under our own jurisdiction. There were fully armed police and Canadian Army on standby. Our projections for a world class casino at Roseau River was for a $100 million a year gross profit. That means in the last 14 years we lost $1.4 billion in potential gaming profits.
In 1994, we approached the Provincial government with $215 million to buy the Winnipeg Jets, the Winnipeg Convention Centre, and build a downtown arena. They said "No way, we would rather lose the Winnipeg Jets than work with Indians." Our deal included a $215 million bond issue by Miller Schroedor of Minneapolis. It met all legal and assessment requirements.
Roseau River applied to the Province in 1999 to build a provincial casino in Emerson. Despite our great location at the US Border, we were not one of the promised five First Nations casinos chosen.
We have battled the whites on tax free cigarettes and they are trying really hard to ensure that our By-laws to allow smoking indoors - in our own businesses and on our own lands - are taken out by economic blackmail and court action.
In 2005, we offered the city of Winnipeg $2 million dollars for twenty acres of city land five minutes from downtown. They sold it for $6,000 an acre to a white developer despite the fact that we offered $100,000 an acre. Highway Six was our back up plan for an urban reserve.
The seventy five acres only represents 1.3% of the land that must be converted to reserve status by the federal government under the 1996 Treaty Land Entitlement Agreement. We still have 98.7% to go before the feds are off the hook on that agreement.
Now the rallying cry of the whites is "Give us a level playing field." This is bullshit because everyone knows that there has never been a level playing field for us. Just ask the RCMP snipers that were ready to kill our people if we resisted white gaming laws.
Walmart is not in the same playing field as other retailers. Flying J, an American Gas Station franchise, regularly knocks out smaller service stations with it's huge buying power. So the level playing is only for when the Indians want to get into business.
The fact is that as long as the Indians are on welfare and begging for money, the white man feels great and so superior. But if we get anything, they want it and they want to control it. Of course, no one asked us our permission when the whites legislated their 1985 changes to the Criminal Code on gaming. And when was the last time a white municipality asked Roseau River permission before they approved a business in their town or city.
We have Japanese, Chinese and Native Americans asking us, "Is there any room for us to help you with investments?" I am saying "Damn right, there is." If the local banks don't want to lend us money, we know we have access to international financing. But just watch how government will see us as a threat. That is the reality for us until we get economically independent.
Just look at the newspapers to see who buys the advertising that finances the papers. It is car dealerships and retail industry. So if we want to fight back on public opinion, we should build our own television stations, radio stations and newspapers. But first, we have to be in business with people who will run professional operations where consumers get a bargain.
Yes, we have the research and studies, but they are available only to serious investors and people who want to do business with us - not to people who just want to stop us.
Chief Terrance Nelson