A block settlement is a particular type of land distribution which allows settlers with the same ethnicity to form small colonies. This settlement type was used throughout western Canada between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some were planned and others were spontaneously created by the settlers themselves. As a legacy of the block settlements, the three Prairie Provinces have several regions where ancestries other than British are the largest, unlike the norm in surrounding regions.

The East Reserve was a block settlement in Manitoba set aside by the Government of Canada exclusively for settlement by Russian Mennonite settlers in 1873. Most of the East Reserve's earliest settlers were from the Kleine Gemeinde or Bergthaler Mennonite churches.