It’s a sunny day in Abbotsford, and Lester Ned is driving across the Sumas Prairie. As the road weaves through neatly manicured fields and grazing cattle, he explains how his ancestors traditionally fished here — in the same place a dairy farm now stands.

The Fraser Valley is the agricultural mecca of British Columbia. But Ned, a former chief of the Sumas band sees it as something different — just 90 years ago 11,000 acres of this valley were under the waters of Sumas Lake.

“They took the lake away and we never got one inch of it. I don’t know how the people (Sumas) survived way back then,” says Ned. The lake was drained by the provincial government to create farmland in the 1920s. At the time, the government considered land that was not being farmed as not in use.

Ned has only pictures to remind him of the lake where his ancestors once fished, hunted waterfowl and travelled by canoe. When the water was diverted out of the valley the farmers moved in. For them, this great, flat valley meant opportunity and progress.

Ned doesn’t see it that way. For the Sumas band, the lake was the heart of the community and something’s still missing all these years later.

That’s why the Sumas band council is now looking to have its losses compensated. But the claims process takes a long time and not everyone, Ned included, is convinced it will work.

Before the lake was drained it was home to sturgeon and migrating birds. In the summer, the Sumas built houses on reed stilts in the middle of the lake to escape the clouds of mosquitoes. In the winter, they moved to the shores.

“There were millions of ducks, geese. The fish would jump right into your canoe there was so many of them, jumping all the time,” says Sumas elder Ray Silver.

But Silver wasn’t there to witness the jumping fish. He was born a few years after the lake was drained. Instead of fishing on the lake, he’d head down to the river with his grandfather, who told him about the lost lake.

“These people weren’t just telling them as stories, they were telling them as truth, the old people,” he says.

And now, hands wrapped around a milky cup of coffee, Silver remembers these truths. He looks out past the parking lot, past the highway to the valley.

“The lake was, I don’t know what you’d call it, our fridge I guess. It meant everything to our people. They (the B.C. government) took away our culture, and lo and behold they took away our lake.”

Silver says people’s respect for nature began to erode when the water was diverted out of the valley to the Fraser River.

It was a feat the Sumas band didn’t believe the province could pull off.

“One day they woke up and the lake was going down,” Silver says. “That’s when the sorrow and the heartbreak started. They (the Sumas people) didn’t believe they could do it but they did it. They drained it.”

With the water gone, the band was isolated. Instead of travelling by canoe to fishing grounds on the Fraser River, they had to climb over Sumas Mountain.

The band lost their main food supply — the lake sturgeon stayed behind when the water flowed out, suffocating in the mud — and its reserve land was divided up.

After the water was gone the band moved to a corner just below Sumas Mountain, where the band is based today. Traditional Sumas territory spanned over 11,000 football fields. When the lake was drained, the Sumas lost 160 acres of reserve land in addition to the lake they lived on. Today, the band’s 242 members live on about 600 acres of land.

The former lake bed was sold to farmers for between $60 and $120 an acre in the early 1930s.

“We bought direct from the government when they drained the lake,” says Neil Smith, 88, who has lived on the land since the 1930s. “No one had owned it before that I know of. We bought from the Dyking Commission (the B.C. government).”

Today, the Fraser Valley produces a billion dollars worth of food each year. The Sumas Prairie farmland is prized for its rich and moist soil.

Smith’s family was among the first wave of farmers on the Sumas Prairie and, for almost a century, has grown tulips, grapes, and berries there.

“We used to plow up big fresh water clam (shells),” he says.

Smith remembers hearing stories of the indigenous people who used to live on the land.

“They used to have a lot more land at one time,” he says. “There was a village out on the lake, they used it when the mosquitoes were bad. They had it on stilts.”

Walking through the 110 acres of his farm, Smith says he wouldn’t trade the land for anything.

The lifestyle of the Sumas people is something that Smith, who has farmed this land his entire life, finds surprising.

“They never farmed,” he says. “They didn’t do anything much. They have quite a bit of land now and they don’t farm it. They always have ambitions to do something but they never materialize.”

Researchers at the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs are working on a specific land claim entitled, Failure of Crown to Protect Sumas Lake and Lands.

“We’re looking at a settlement,” Chief Dalton Silver says during an interview at the Sumas band council office. “One of the things we talked about ... was the ability to buy some land to add to our reserve, to replace the acres that we lost there.”

Jody Woods, research director for the union, says the Sumas Lake claim is unique because the area wasn't a static area of land. When the lake flooded its size increased; depending on the season the band either lived on or around the lake.

“Canada really isn’t committed to the fair, just and timely resolution of claims,” she says. “All the waiting is very frustrating.” In 2012, the band settled another claim that had been in the system for about 20 years.

But the federal government says new legislation is speeding up the claim process. Since the fall of 2008 Canada has dealt with a backlog of 541 specific land claims. And since 2007, over 90 have been settled. Specific claims arise when the government has wrongly taken away land or mismanaged a First Nation’s funds or assets.

“This change responds to calls from first nations for a better, more streamlined process,” Genevieve Guibert, a spokeswoman from Aboriginal Affairs, wrote in an email. “(This) will help accelerate progress at many negotiating tables, so that first nations can benefit from the certainty and economic opportunity that settlements bring.”

But for the Sumas band, the process has been long and arduous. This isn’t the first time the band has tried to address the loss of the lake. In the late 1960s, then band chief Lester Ned, approached the federal government for compensation.

“He was pretty much laughed out of the office,” says Silver. “He was more or less told it was nothing they wanted to discuss.”

Now, both Woods and Silver say the Sumas band has a chance to be compensated — at least partly. The first step is determining where the band lived before the lake was drained, and how the land was used.

The Sumas band council is aware that the lake can never be returned to them. But by starting this specific land claims process, the band is determined to fight for some form of compensation.

Back on the Sumas Prairie, Ned turns his car onto Wellsline Road. He gestures to the homes of farmers he knows.

“It’s not their fault directly,” he says. “They bought the land with good intention or whatever. They paid for it, eh? It’s just that the government at the time, how they took advantage of the Sumas Indians. We get along, you know, with those farmers. As good as possible, I guess.”

History of the draining of Sumas Lake

1878: Farmers threatened by regular flooding of the lake and surrounding rivers pressure the government to solve the problem, resulting in the Sumas Dyking Act.

1907: British Columbia Electric Railway plans to lay train track between New Westminster and Chilliwack. The railway supports the idea of draining the lake because it would result in level ground for the tracks.

1917-1918: The land settlement board proposes to drain the lake using a system of ditches, dams, canals and pump houses.

1920: The provincial government accepts the proposal, agreeing to fund the $1.5 million project. It ended up costing $3.7 million — nearly double the initial estimates. Farmers were forced to pay this additional cost through increased taxes.

1923: Using the newly built system of canals and pumping stations, the water from Sumas Lake is pumped into the Fraser River.

1924: Sumas Lake is now the Sumas Prairie — the lake bed is dry. A total of 33,000 acres of farmland is created.

1924-25: Government begins to sell the land, but the price deters potential farmers. A marketing plan is begun to increase sales.

1980-83: A new pump house and dam are constructed. A pump house is still used today to prevent the Sumas Prairie from flooding.

• For more on this story, visit www.indigenousreporting.com or tune in to the Early Edition on CBC Radio 1 this week, for a special series on water by students in the Reporting in Indigenous Communities class at the UBC School of Journalism.

With files from the MSA Museum Society

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Sumas First Nation seeks compensation for its lost lake

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