BATTLEFORD, Saskatchewan — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s push for reconciliation of Canada’s troubled history with its Indigenous people particularly resonates here in the town of Battleford, in the central part of Saskatchewan Province.

A pass system, similar to South Africa’s under apartheid, once required Indigenous people to get a government official’s written permission to step off their reserves. A public hanging in 1885 of six Cree and two Assiniboine men on murder charges that have since been questioned remains the largest mass execution in Canada’s history.

And now there is the verdict in the Gerald Stanley trial.

Mr. Stanley, a local farmer, had been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man from the nearby Red Pheasant Cree Nation.

In August 2016, Mr. Boushie and four other Indigenous people drove onto Mr. Stanley’s property. Mr. Stanley, 56, testified at trial that he believed their goal was robbery, which he and his son tried to prevent.