After spending more than a hundred years illegally associated by Canada with the Little Pine First Nation, the band was awarded the Lucky Man Reserve, on the eastern border of the RM of Meeting Lake.
The nation is named for Chief Papaway, ᐸᐯᐍ papewê meaning "lucky man", headman for Little Pine when that group signed Treaty 6 at Fort Walsh in 1879.
Settling near Battleford in 1883, he requested a reserve adjacent to Poundmaker, Little Pine, and Big Bear the following year.
[4] In the 1970s, modern research by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations discovered that Lucky Man had signed Treaty 6 without receiving any land.
[5] Newly elected Chief Rod King petitioned all levels of government for a suitable reserve site, and in 1989 - more than 100 years after Lucky Man signed Treaty 6 - the band was awarded the Mayfair provincial pasture, consisting of 12 sections in the Thickwood Hills.