The Federal Indian and Northern Affairs minister hopes that negotiations with the Bay of Quinte Mohawks over a 369-hectare swath of land that takes in about half of the town of Deseronto can be restarted next month.

After an emergency meeting with band chief R. Donald Maracle and other Mohawk leaders yesterday, Chuck Strahl said he hopes the band will accept that the government will not expropriate any land and turn it over to the band.

Natives say the land was improperly taken from them.

Much of the so-called Culbertson Tract is now privately owned and is not under the control of government, so it cannot be given back to the band. That was a position Strahl reiterated in his meeting with band officials yesterday.

"We will not expropriate land as part of any settlement," Strahl said. He said the federal government's practice, which they will follow in this case, would be to negotiate a monetary settlement to cover any land determined to have been improperly taken from the band.

The band could then use that money to buy parcels of land from either private owners or other levels of gover nment, or spend it in ways that would benefit the band. "Their feeling is the land should be

returned to them, but the fact is much of the land is now fee-simple," Strahl said, referring to the legal concept of land being in private hands.

"The land is not federally controlled and it is not provincially controlled."

Maracle said last week that the band was seeking compensation for the nearly 200 years the land in question had been controlled by people other than band members, but said the Mohawks' long-term goal was to have the parcel returned to native control.

"The financial compensation is really to address the issue of loss of use from 1837 to whenever it's reacquired," said Maracle, "but the ultimate goal is to have the property returned to control of the [band] over time."

It was that position that caused negotiations between the two sides to break down earlier this month.

Strahl noted it was not unusual for the federal government to negotiate with native bands over lands that cannot be returned to them -in one case in Welland, the disputed land is under water as part of the canal there -and he said the idea of compensation for the loss of tribal lands is a fair compromise.

Negotiations are scheduled to resume next month, and at yesterday's meeting, Maracle asked Strahl to put the federal government's position on the land and compensation for it in writing.

"I remain hopeful that we can find the right kind of language to reassure everyone involved," Strahl said.

In 1793, the British Crown granted a tract of land along the Bay of Quinte to the Mohawks Simcoe Deed. One of the deed's provisions specified that these lands could only be surrendered to the Crown with the formal consent of the Mohawk people through a community vote.

The land was transferred in 1837 and the band claims that that transfer was an invalid transaction since the Mohawk people did not agree to surrender the land to the Crown. The land was patented to John Culbertson, the grandson and an heir of Captain John Deseronto, who was a former Mohawk chief.

The Mohawks started the process of asserting their claim to the land in 1995. In 2003, after researching the history of the land, the government accepted the application and began negotiations with the Mohawks to settle the claim.

The area has been the subject of barricades by local Mohawks over the past several years, and a quarry north of the town that falls within the tract has been occupied by Mohawk protesters to prevent private development in the area.

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