It's great news for Long Plain First Nation after a long-time-coming settlement has finally been resolved for the mismanagement over a 100-year-old land claim.

Chief Dennis Meeches says reserve land was sold in 1916, and Canada had not followed through with agreements over the way it was to be handled. That settlement was formally concluded on November 8.

"We've had three land claim settlement agreements resolved to date," says Meeches. "The first was the '94 treaty land entitlement, the 2012 loss of use, and this would be the 1916 surrender. We filed this back in 1999. It's taken us 22 years to resolve this particular claim. It has to do with the mismanagement of the surrender and auctioning off of lands back over 100 years ago. Long Plain First Nation was not properly compensated, as is the case with many of these land claims."

Meeches explains it was a $32-million settlement for which they negotiated.

"We do have an ATR component in there -- Additions to Reserve," continues Meeches. "We negotiated the purchase of additional land, which would be 1,750 acres of land. There are other benefits, obviously, with this particular claim per-capita provision, which will begin payments Friday (Dec. 3) and Saturday (Dec. 4). We did have a closing out ceremony just the other day."

He says they now will begin the task of implementing this settlement agreement.

Meeches explains the land is located in the southern part of their First Nation.

"A lot of those properties are still alienated," adds Meeches. "Part of the claim also, is our neighbour's, Dakota Plains First Nation, who were using Long Plain land at one time. The government did compensate us for that, too. All of the difficult work that we've had to do with this particular claim at Long Plain, we're satisfied."

He notes they're a fairly large First Nation and are quite busy.

"This claim alone will enhance the work that we're doing in terms of land repatriation and economic reconciliation," says Meeches. "It's been a long time coming and we do have a couple of additional claims that we do need to file. We'll work on those, and I'm thinking it'll definitely take a long time to resolve those ones, too."

Meeches adds they're continuing to engage in the difficult work involved in land claims and they're optimistic when it comes to the government's position on it and the repatriation of those lands.

"I'm really hopeful that they'll be true to their word," notes Meeches. "I do have to acknowledge Helen Harrison, the lead negotiator for Canada. We had a number of different negotiators from Canada, and they almost seemed like a revolving door. But she had committed to deal with this and see that this went through, and I'm thankful for that."