"Siddon Cheated Denes: Erasmus"

YELLOWKNIFE, N.W.T. (CP) - Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon has cheated Dene Indians by granting Inuit people a greater share of disputed land in the North-west Territories, says a Dene leader.

Bill Erasmus, national chief of the Dene Nation, said Siddon secretly agreed to give Inuit title to 259 square kilometres of land in the Western Arctic which would have gone to the Dene under a boundary line proposed by an arbitrator in April.

The line runs north from the Manitoba-Saskatchewan boundary into the Thelon Game Sanctuary, then northwest into the Arctic Ocean.

It would be the western boundary for an Inuit land-claim settlement and eventually form the basis for dividing the territories into two separate political jurisdictions.