Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday signed a C$1.3 billion ($1 billion) deal, one of the largest of its kind, to settle a centuries-old land dispute with the native people of the Feet -Black.

“We come together today to right a wrong of the past,” Trudeau said on the traditional lands of the so-called Siksika First Nation in western Canada.

In 1910, the Canadian government seized almost half of the Indian Nation’s reservation lands in the province of Alberta to use to obtain resources and sell them to settlers.

The appropriation of the lands took place even with the existence of a treaty, signed 30 years earlier, which guaranteed ownership of the approximately 46,000 hectares of the western prairie region to the Aboriginal community.

Trudeau said the Canadian government had “acted dishonourably” by taking the “most productive agricultural and mineral-rich land in the community for the benefit of others.”

In turn, Canadian Indigenous Affairs Minister Marc Miller said the Siksika had lost some of the wealth generated by these lands, as well as access to many sacred places.

In this sense, he argued that it was important to recognize “disproportionate land negotiations and transfers”.

“While this deal is not catching up with the past, we hope it will lead to a better and brighter future for this generation and beyond,” he added.

“This land claim, yes, 1.3 billion is a lot of money. It will never be what it was before. But we have to move on,” the official said.

The community, Miller added, is beginning to see a revival of its culture and traditions, as well as the Blackfoot language, which is now used in local street signs, for example.