An unrelenting U.S. senator who champions native rights has re-launched his long-running campaign to win compensation for a Canadian aboriginal group whose ancestors were forced from their American homeland south of the Great Lakes nearly 200 years ago.

Daniel Inouye, who represents Hawaii in the U.S. Senate, has reintroduced a bill to grant the Pottawatomi Nation of Canada — its 6,000 members are now scattered among 30 native communities in Ontario — a $1.8-million payout in recognition of the “forced removal” of their ancestors in the early 1800s from tribal lands in the U.S.

“The Pottawatomi Nation in Canada has sought justice for over 150 years,” Inouye said earlier this month in Washington as he presented his latest petition to Congress on behalf of the Ontario First Nation. “They have done all that we asked in order to establish their claim. Now it is time for us to finally live up to the promise our government made so many years ago.”

Added Inouye: “It will not correct all the wrongs of the past, but it is a demonstration that this government is willing to admit when it has left unfulfilled an obligation and that the United States is willing to do what we can to see that justice — so long delayed — is not now denied.”

Inouye’s efforts on behalf of the Pottawatomi people of Canada began in the late 1980s following a meeting with then-Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Derek Burney.

The senator’s proposed legislation to compensate the exiled nation has been brought forward several times since then, but never passed.

In February 2007, when Inouye last urged the U.S. Senate to back his bill, Pottawatomi Chief Ed Williams described the senator as a “fantastic guy” and a “real champion for aboriginal people.”

Williams and others from the Moose Deer Point First Nation near Parry Sound, Ont., trace their ancestry to the U.S. But their forebears were among those who refused to migrate to reserves in the U.S. southwest when they were forced from their traditional tribal lands in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

The Pottawatomi were pressured in the 1830s to relocate at gunpoint by the U.S. army under the infamous “Indian Removal” policies of then-president Andrew Jackson.

Many resettled west of the Mississippi River. But some bands escaped eastward, settling in remote woodlands closer to the Canadian border or crossing into what was then Upper Canada.

Some of the Pottawatomi refugees ended up blending with other related First Nations such as the Ojibway and Ottawa, but one group in Canada received land on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay and formed the Moose Deer Point community.

As early as the late 1800s, petitions were being made by the Pottawatomi heirs in Canada to collect payments promised by the U.S. government at the time of the removals.

A 1908 report to Congress concluded that if the claims from Canada were judged “solely on the basis of descent, then it would seem that these Canadian Indians would be entitled to the same share in any fund arising from the claim” as U.S. Pottawatomi.

But American officials repeatedly balked at issuing payments to natives beyond the U.S. border. Although Pottawatomi descendants in the U.S. have received recognition and compensation for the displacement of their ancestors, their Canadian cousins have so far received nothing.

About 20 years ago, the bid for Canadian compensation was revived with support from the Native American Rights Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based aboriginal advocacy group. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Pottawatomi Nation of Canada, which led to an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to seek a “fair, equitable and just settlement” with the Ontario natives.

But any deal would require approval from Congress and, ultimately, the signature of the U.S. president.

The campaign gained a key ally when Inouye pledged to sponsor a bill in the U.S. Senate urging immediate payment of compensation to the Pottawatomi’s “lost tribe” in Canada.

The $1.8-million amount was calculated based on what the ancestors of the Canadian-based Pottawatomi were owed under terms of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago.

The Canadian natives have stated that if the money is ever paid, it would be managed through a trust established to disburse funds for education, cultural heritage and economic development among the Pottawatomi descendants in Ontario.

“If enacted, this bill will finally achieve a measure of justice for a tribal nation that has for far too long been denied,” Inouye told his Senate colleagues on Jan. 6.

He went on to describe in vivid detail the historical struggles of the Pottawatomis who fled to Canada.

“They were often pursued to the border by government troops, government-paid mercenaries or both,” Inouye said. “Official files of the Canadian and United States governments disclose that many Pottawatomis were forced to leave their homes without their horses or any of their possessions other than the clothes on their backs.”