RIGHTS, RESOURCES, AND RESISTANCE: PAN-INDIGENOUS POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS IN NORTHEASTERN ALBERTA, 1968-1984

A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Kimberly Wilson 2015 Frost Centre for Canadian Studies & Indigenous Studies M.A. Graduate Program May 2015

ABSTRACT

RIGHTS, RESOURCES, AND RESISTANCE: PAN-INDIGENOUS POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS IN NORTHEASTERN ALBERTA, 1968-1984

Kimberly Wilson

The development of pan-Indigenous political organizations in northeastern

Alberta in the context of oil and gas development during the 1970s created disparate effects on Indigenous communities in the region. Resistance to assimilation policies led the Indian Association of Alberta to transform itself into a unified voice that represented

Aboriginal and treaty rights in the late 1960s; however, the organization lost legitimacy following the divergence of goals between influential Indigenous leaders, Harold

Cardinal and Joseph Dion. Tripartite agreements began to unfold between the federal and provincial governments, the oil and gas industry, and individual local leadership; environmental degradation spread throughout the landscape. Some communities benefitted financially whereas other communities, like Lubicon Lake Nation, received little compensation and felt the full force of industrial contamination of their traditional territories. Without the support of pan-Indigenous political organizations, Lubicon Lake developed an individual response that was successful in gaining international attention to their conditions.

Keywords: Northeastern Alberta, Canada, Indigenous politics, oil and gas industry, 1970s, political economy, environmental history, Indian Association of Alberta, Lubicon Lake Nation, Harold Cardinal

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge the Lubicon Lake Nation as their history and stories that they have continued to share with the world was the initial inspiration for the thesis. Megweetch.

The guidance and support I have received from members of the Frost Centre community at Trent University have been integral to the writing of this thesis. My supervisor, Stephen Bocking has been a wonderful editor, and I appreciate all the guidance and patience he has shown throughout the process. The suggestions and careful notes made by Joan Sangster, committee member, has directed the writing in a cohesive and meaningful way. I would like to note Julia Harrison and Stephen Hill for all their supportive discussions that carried me through the initial years of the program as well as to John Wadland and Mark Dickinson whose compassion toward studying the history of the land that Canada is situated on led me toward the Frost Centre. Thank you. I am grateful to all my colleagues at the Frost Centre, especially Andrew Cragg and David

Tough for their assistance with editing and critical discussions of the topic; I have learned so much through conversation alone. I want to acknowledge the Shelagh Grant

Foundation and the Frost Centre Award committee for financing my primary research.

The experience of archival work and visiting the sites of the story has been truly valuable.

Thank you to my friends and family whose support has been crucial to the journey. Especially I want to acknowledge my mother, Martha Maureen, who left this world in August 2011. Her encouragement and support toward authenticity and education has been forever the key to following my interests and commitment to social and environmental justice. Rest in power.

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Table of Contents:

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..ii

Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………….iii

Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………..iv

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter 1: Creating Canada: A History of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, State Assimilation Policies, and Pan-Indigenous Resistance Movements…………………12 Development of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights………………………………19 Assimilation Policies of the Federal Government of Canada………………..31 Pan-Indigenous Political Organizations and Resistance……………………..47

Chapter 2: Relationship Transformation: Radical Pan-Indigenous Political Organizations, 1968-1975.………………………………………………….………………………..55 History of the Indian Association of Alberta………………………………...57 “Citizens Plus” or The Red Paper…………………………………………...67 Indigenous Intellectuals and Political Analysis……………………………...81

Chapter 3: Discussions at the Table: Indigenous Leadership, Communities, and Alberta’s Oil and Gas Industry, 1976-1979…...... ………….…………..………………...85 Political Fractures Within Pan-Indigenous Organizations….……………….88 Oil & Gas Industry Moves Into the Communities……………………….…100 Political Analyses and Critiques.……………………………………..….…111

Chapter 4: Lubicon Lake Nation, 1979-1984…………….………………………...119 Exclusion From Treaty 8…………………………………………………...120 Legal Barriers for the Lubicon…………………………………………...... 126 Lubicon Lake in the Context of Canada………………………………...….136

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….144

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Introduction

Northeastern Alberta is a unique landscape that has undergone dramatic changes over the last fifty years. Covered in spruce and pine trees, the diversity of the natural boreal landscape of northeastern Alberta encapsulates muskeg marshes, massive lakes, and, in the east, the Athabasca and the Peace rivers. Animals make their homes amongst the forested marshes as do people, all dynamically interacting with one another.

Indigenous communities have always lived in the region. The communities’ social and economic relationships with the natural landscape include hunting, trapping, fishing, as well as spiritual connections, which for centuries linked generations. Since the early

1970s, the region has also been home to the tar sands, one of the largest oil and gas projects in the world. Economic, social, and spiritual relationships of Indigenous communities have become more fragile and contested since the start of the oil and gas industry in Alberta. The relationship between the communities of northern Alberta and the natural landscape has become strained in the later part of the twentieth century; communities have had to work hard to redefine their relationships with the land amidst the transitioning of their economies alongside a regional oil and gas boom.

The purpose of this research is to examine the historical relations between the oil and gas industry, federal and provincial governments, and Indigenous communities of northeastern Alberta. A regional lens is used to understand the significance of the landscape to the political and economic intentions and actions of communities, industry, and government. The region’s resource industry, and more specifically its oil and gas industry, has had different impacts on individual communities.

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Specific communities have experienced, both politically and economically, disparate industrial changes in the region. One important reason for those differences is that the natural landscape itself is so geographically diverse, therefore creating opportunities for multiple economic activities. As well as political and economic forces, the communities’ geography plays a significant role in the development of the region. The thesis contributes to ongoing research that considers industrial impacts on the landscape of northern Indigenous communities while interrogating the relationship between the

Canadian state and Indigenous peoples through an examination of historical, political, and economic changes of northeastern Alberta since the early 1970s.

The histories of individual communities are central to archival research and this thesis. The general history of First Nations and other Indigenous groups and the Canadian governments reveals the complexities and origins of important issues, including

Aboriginal and treaty rights. The first chapter, therefore, is a literature review on the topic. The chapter examines three themes in the history of the making of Canada. The first theme is the development of the numbered treaties between the Crown and the federal government of Canada with First Nations. The treaties were significant in creating the contemporary concept of Aboriginal rights. Treaties represented the development of a formal relationship between the Imperial government of Britain, the federal government of Canada, and the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. The intentions of the treaties were to enable the development and settlement of the land, but also to ensure that the inevitable changes colonialism would bring to Indigenous communities would be slow enough to ensure that Indigenous ways of life were not drastically changed.

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The second theme was the contradictory implementation of assimilation policies by the federal government of Canada.1 Assimilation policies were aimed at absorbing

Indigenous peoples into Euro-Canadian society. The contradiction lay in the fact that the terms of the treaties were to protect an Indigenous way of life; however, periodically, the federal government has introduced assimilation policies with the purpose of bringing

Indigenous peoples into the capitalist economy. The policies ignored the intricate and complex relationships Indigenous peoples had with the natural landscapes around their communities. These policies caused severe damage to Indigenous peoples and their communities.

As sure as there have been changes, there has been resistance. The third theme is the political organization and subsequent resistance of Indigenous groups and, more specifically, the organization of pan-Indigenous groups in reaction to assimilation policies. Resistance and political organization had begun as the first European settlers reached Indigenous territories. The organizations’ purposes were to resist and address settler activities in regions where the natural landscape would be heavily impacted. The final section of the literature review observes the rise of regional pan-Indigenous political organizations in Canada. The focus is on their efforts to protect Indigenous communities’ ways of life in regions that were being heavily affected by settlement activities, much like those of more recent developments in Northern Alberta. Throughout the chapter, the

1 The Department of Indian Affairs, since its conception, has administered many policies specifically designed to absorb Indigenous peoples into mainstream Euro-Canadian society. These policies, using various approaches, had the same end goal -assimilation. In reference to the DIA, Miller notes, “the central goal of controlling and unmaking Indians has remained its mandate until very recently. “ J.R. Miller, Lethal Legacy: Current Native Controversies in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2008) 34.

4 changes of northeastern Alberta are discussed focusing on how Indigenous communities have experienced them.

Chapter 2 focuses on specific Indigenous political organizations that were taking various shapes and forms, eventually transforming the relationship between the federal government and Indigenous peoples in Canada. The Indian Association of Alberta is the central point of interest in this chapter. The Association began in the early twentieth century as a pan-Indigenous regional political body whose intentions were to represent the interests of various communities and reserves in Alberta. Indigenous communities were experiencing high levels of poverty, largely due to the changes in their ways of life.

The objective of the Indian Association of Alberta was to educate and inform people about their Aboriginal and treaty rights as well as to represent their interests in protecting their ways of life. Their efforts were many but had little impact until the 1960s when the development of Indigenous political organization in North America began to shift to a more radical and militant approach to politics, seeking recognition of Indigenous cultural identities as well as Aboriginal and treaty rights that were otherwise being ignored by the state. This shift came just in time for the release of the policy statement, the White Paper, in June 1969 by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Indian Affairs Minister Jean

Chretien. The response to the policy paper was an unprecedented national movement amongst Native political organizations who took a stand together against the statement.

The Indian Association of Alberta’s leadership, along with many other Indigenous political organizations, had shifted to a new generation of individuals who were university-educated, charismatic, and highly suspicious of non-Native involvement in the political affairs of Indigenous peoples. Harold Cardinal led the Indian Association of

Alberta, along with representatives from other regionally based Indigenous political

5 organizations to Parliament Hill on June 1, 1969. The White Paper became controversial in that the policy’s clear agenda was to address poverty on reserves and the blatant inequitable distribution of wealth between Indigenous communities and settler communities by removing all special statuses that Indigenous peoples have in Canada.

Led by a new and energetic leadership, the Indian Association of Alberta, along with other regional and national Indigenous groups, demanded the federal government renounce this policy. The Association stated that the policy was a clear effort of forced assimilation. Under pressure from multiple Native political organizations, Trudeau and

Chretien agreed and the White Paper was shelved. The efforts of Cardinal, the Indian

Association of Alberta, and other Indigenous leaders and groups of the time period changed the political relationship between Native political organizations and the federal government.

Immediately following the success of the removal of the White Paper policy statement, the Indian Association of Alberta experienced new challenges regarding leadership approaches toward the rapid industrial changes of the region. Chapter 3 addresses the developing complexities of the Indian Association of Alberta into the 1970s and reveals the effects that the changes of the political organization have had on various communities. In the mid 1970s, Indigenous politics in Alberta experienced inner conflicts between two popular leaders, Harold Cardinal and Joseph Dion. Cardinal remained the

President of the Association for a number of years following 1968, but eventually left to take a position in the regional department of Indian Affairs. His decision to work with the federal government was seen by Dion as clearly antithetical to the goals of Indigenous peoples in Alberta. Dion was a popular chief of Kehewin reserve and became Cardinal’s successor as the next President of the Indian Association of Alberta.

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The opposing opinions of two important leaders had serious impacts on individual

Indigenous communities in Alberta as the communities attempted to navigate landscapes that were changing rapidly as a result of the increased presence of the oil and gas industry. Indigenous communities were mostly an afterthought for government and industry, but the changes in the political relationship between the federal government and

First Nations meant that reserves could individually negotiate directly with both parties.

The complex nature of band councils directly involved in industry negotiations meant that the role of regional political organizations began to lose power in their relationship with the federal and provincial governments. Dion eventually resigned from the Indian

Association of Alberta to become directly involved in an oil and gas project on his home reserve whereas Cardinal eventually became a private consultant for isolated First

Nations communities trying to assert their Aboriginal and treaty rights. While one leader led the organization to a business-industrial oriented model, the other leader followed a bureaucratic path that eventually failed and led to private consulting on land issues, both seeking recognition for distinct Indigenous identity as well as self-determining political and economic roles for Indigenous communities.

The divergent paths of two significant political leaders encouraged political divisions amongst many First Nations communities of northern Alberta. The paths taken by the leaders diverged from the previous goals of building stronger pan-Indigenous political organizations. In the region, Native nationalism as a confrontational approach toward capitalism almost entirely disappeared with the advent of oil and gas exploitation.

Indigenous intellectuals have had much to say since the 1960s about the difficulties in

Native political organizations and the roles of their leaders. The chapter ends with a brief

7 acknowledgment of intellectuals, Howard Adams, Taiaiake Alfred, and Glen Sean

Coulthard, and their consideration of the splintered politics of the 1970s.

The highly publicized case of the Lubicon Lake Nation is directly related to the preceding events and ideas discussed in the thesis. The story of the Lubicon and their fight to gain Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada focuses on their ongoing relationship with the natural landscape and the political and economic events that have transpired in the region over time. Chapter 4 is a case study of the Lubicon Lake Nation’s attempts to gain those rights in the middle of a region undergoing rapid political, economic, and environmental transformation. The Lubicon were geographically isolated from major areas of commercial trade therefore contributing to the unique circumstances of the

Lubicon regarding the region’s major treaty, Treaty 8. Examining the Lubicon Lake Cree

Nation’s history in relation to other communities in the northern regions of the province shows that, while individual communities are part of a larger web of political and economic changes, they experience environmental damages in distinct ways.

The research material for chapters 2, 3, and 4 was primarily drawn from archival and other primary sources. The legal histories of treaties and individual communities’ roles in them were initially found in files of the Department of Indian Affairs in RG-10 at the National Library and Archives in Ottawa. I became aware of a news publication called The Native People while searching through the catalogues of RG-10. The Native

People was a publication run by the Alberta Native Communications Society from 1968 to 1980. Through reading the publication, I realized the impact Native political organizations had on individual communities in regions that were undergoing severe change, particularly industrial changes. Each community seemed to respond to the onslaught of political and economic change differently based on their geography and

8 relationship to the state, whether they had reserve status or not. Organizations’ agendas, however, changed with leadership. The support that pan-Indigenous political organizations brought to urban government spaces as well as the advocacy work that the organizations were able to do in relation to the individual communities’ circumstances were critical in the communities’ efforts to make political and economic decisions within their regions. I saw this as an important and interesting development in the region’s history. As a result, chapter 3 is almost entirely an analysis of articles from The Native

People.

The Lubicon Lake Nation’s story was the initial inspiration for the thesis research.

The fact that their land claim remains unresolved while their hunting and trapping territory is rapidly being decimated in front of their eyes has haunted my writing. I wanted to know why and how. My archival journey, appropriately, ended at the Glenbow

Archives in Calgary, Alberta in August 2012 where I spent my time going through the

Lubicon Lake Nation research fonds; the collection is yet to be catalogued. Their land claim took place in the years of 1979-1984. Their lawyers donated all their documents, memos, affidavits, court orders, etc., to the Glenbow. This action is relevant both politically and historically to the Lubicon’s relationship with the museum.

Following the failure of their final attempt at a resolution in 1984, the Lubicon began a well-publicized international boycott of the Glenbow Museum’s exhibit The

Spirit Sings. The exhibit was sponsored by Shell Canada and depicted the lives and cultures of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The purpose of the exhibit was to portray to international visitors of the upcoming 1988 Calgary Olympics that Canada was proud and supportive of Indigenous habitants and respectful of their diversity in culture. The

Lubicon saw this as an ironic and convenient gesture of the provincial and federal

9 governments and the oil industries that were sponsoring the exhibit. In the midst of their legal plight with industry and the state and in their efforts to gain respect for the right to live on the land by their own means, a boycott of the exhibit seemed appropriate.

A significant number of museums supported the boycott by refusing to send artifacts for the exhibit. The actions were also successful in the fact that through this course of action the United Nations Human Rights Committee declared in 1987 that, due to the unmitigated development and unresolved land claim on Lubicon territory, the federal and provincial governments were being unjust and destroying a way of life; a life that was largely interconnected with the natural landscape. The Lubicons, led by Chief

Bernard Ominayak and their lawyer, Fred Lennarson, demanded Canada take actions to stop development on their territory. Canada ignored the ruling. The message emerging from the international community, as a response to the boycott, was that Canada must change its relationship with Indigenous peoples.2

The importance of this thesis lies in its analysis of the complex relations between

Indigenous peoples, industry, and the state while utilizing a regional, historical, and materialist approach. Wallace Clement notes that, “the relations between people are fundamentally shaped by the way a society reproduces itself.”3 I would add that the relations between people and the natural landscape are interconnected with how local economies produce, distribute, and consume goods. This production affects communities’ spiritual and cultural health; economy and politics therefore intersect with culture and

2 John Goddard, Bernard Ominayak, a good chronological timeline of events can be found in “A History of Struggle: A chronology of the Lubicon Cree land rights struggle” in Briarpatch magazine, Feb. 28, 2012.

3 Wallace Clement, “Introduction: Whither the New Canadian Political Economy?” in Understanding Canada: Building on the New Canadian Political Economy, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1997.

10 identity. In writing this research, I am primarily concerned with the political and economic changes in regards to the historical relationship between the settler-colonial state government with Indigenous peoples, yet I recognize an inherent cultural and spiritual element in the study of those changes. The history of the relationship between the federal government and Indigenous peoples in Canada remains at the forefront of all conversations related to northern mega-energy projects, such as the current and ongoing controversies surrounding Enbridge Line 9, the Keystone XL pipeline, and the Northern

Gateway Pipeline. Understanding this relationship as a product of its regional environmental history and the larger political-economic components of Canada assists in examining ongoing and proposed resource projects.

The history of the treaties in Canada further explains the intentions of First

Nations in protecting ways of life that are intricately connected to natural landscapes.

That history also explains the realities and legalities of Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Efforts have been made by the federal government to abandon those agreements and, therefore, change the ways of life for Indigenous communities in order to reflect the values and lifestyles of Euro-Canadian communities. The events of northeastern Alberta from 1968 to 1984 are an important example of this historical trend in Canada. The lives of the people of Lubicon Lake Nation were influenced through the course of these events.

Partly due to their isolated geography and history within the treaty system, and partly due to the egregious terms and conditions of oil and gas development, the Lubicon have had a much different experience with industrial change than many other First Nations communities in the region. Pan-Indigenous resistance has arisen throughout the history of colonial settlement in Canada but has had varying successes and impacts on the

11 relationships that Indigenous peoples have with federal and provincial governments. The experiences of the Lubicon are deeply connected to the dynamics of that relationship.

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Chapter 1: Creating Canada: A History of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, State Assimilation Policies, and Pan-Indigenous Resistance Movements

Understanding the history of Canada requires a careful look at the history of the creation of the nation-state of Canada and the ongoing relationship the state has with

Indigenous communities. This chapter focuses on a general history of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples. The economic colonization of the geographic area that now makes up the nation-state of Canada initially depended on a relationship with

Indigenous peoples who inhabited North America; European newcomers required both basic survival skills as well as positive trade relations. This relationship, while never perfect, became increasingly inequitable and exploitative after 1867. Following

Confederation, the economic motivations of the newly formed Canadian government changed from an interest in the fur trade toward increasing settlement on the prairies and shortly thereafter, an agenda of resource development on the prairies and in the north.

Motivations based on gaining and controlling political and economic power of the country have been the catalyst for nearly two hundred years of efforts of the Canadian government to conduct treaty signings with First Nations.4 Treaty signings occurred at different times in various regions of the country depending on the settlement and resource development agenda of the federal government. Apart from treaty signings, the government created the Department of Indian Affairs to administer the affairs of

Indigenous peoples in Canada. Most policies created by the department have been

4 For the most part, when we talk about treaty relationships, we are talking about First Nations and the Canadian state, excluding the Inuit and Métis. It is recognized, however, that Métis peoples are impacted by and were also influential in the signing of the numbered treaties. The Métis were involved in the negotiations of Treaty 3 and almost included in the terms until the Red River Resistance occurred, in which case the government excluded them. Olive Dickason, “The First Numbered Treaties, Police, and the Indian Act,” in A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2006), 178.

13 assimilation policies; some policies, however, were segregationist and isolationist therefore creating exclusionary, racist structures while attempting to integrate Native peoples in to Euro-Canadian society. These policies contradict the Indigenous perspective of the intent of the treaties and have increasingly been met with anger and frustration from Indigenous peoples, especially the First Nations who were the main targets of these policies. Indigenous communities and leaders were never necessarily opposed to changes in their economy, such as farming and resource development, but were adamant in maintaining their cultures and traditions as well as having political autonomy within their communities. Assimilative policies were designed to absorb Indigenous peoples into mainstream Canadian culture economically, politically, and spiritually. Despite these policies, Native communities have maintained distinct languages, governance structures, and identities.

The inauspicious histories of the relationship between the colonial government and northern Indigenous communities have been intertwined with a history of politics and economics as well as natural environmental factors. Following the signing of the treaties, a struggle persisted throughout the twentieth century in the face of government attempts to assimilate Indigenous communities. The failed attempts to find equitable solutions to the use of the local landscapes, amidst efforts at assimilating the communities, led to various forms of resistance. In other words, promises previously made through treaty that

Indigenous communities would maintain the right to a way of life were not respected.

This chapter is organized into three themes regarding the relationship between Indigenous communities and the federal government of Canada. These themes speak to the specific circumstances of northeastern Alberta from the years of 1968 to 1984. The chapter serves as both an introduction to the history and a general literature review to reveal the

14 contemporary and historical discussions of political theorists and historians, both

Indigenous and non-Indigenous, regarding the treaty relationships.

The first theme explores the development of treaties in Canada as initial agreements of co-habitation and reciprocity between Indigenous peoples and the federal government. The second theme discusses some of the relevant policies that were implemented by the government to further their colonial agenda. Those policies were a betrayal of the treaties. The third theme reveals the ongoing efforts of Indigenous resistance toward the federal government’s betrayal of the treaties and development of assimilation policies by creating regional, pan-Indigenous political organizations. The treaties are a focal point for the relationship between the Canadian government and

Indigenous peoples. The terms and interpretations of the treaties have remained a crucial aspect of contemporary conflicts and resolutions. Policies that have been particularly harmful to Indigenous communities include the unequal distribution of space through the implementation of the reserve system, controlling the overall movement of Indigenous peoples, gender discrimination that inequitably enfranchised men into Canadian citizenship, thereby removing the legal status of some people, and the creation and enforcement of residential school policies and institutions. Various policies regarding

Indigenous peoples have developed throughout the history of Canada. The government policies being discussed in this chapter, however, often shared a common purpose: to phase out the responsibility of the federal government to continue special services for

First Nations as outlined in the treaties. Many First Nations have since seen these policies as a betrayal of the special relationship that was created between various Indigenous nations and the Crown and then later on with the federal government.

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The chapter is designed to point out the contradictory actions of the federal government in their relationship with Indigenous peoples and to argue that pan-

Indigenous political organizations were not a development of the twentieth century, but part of a longer history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism. To show these simultaneous developments, the chapter is constructed in themes rather than chronology to better reflect the larger themes of the thesis as a whole. The chapter will bring us to

Alberta in 1968, the year that Harold Cardinal was elected president of the Indian

Association of Alberta as well as the year that Pierre Elliott Trudeau became Prime

Minister of Canada. The following year, 1969, was a turning point in Canada’s historical relationship with Indigenous communities. 1969 and the vehement resistance toward the

White Paper by national and regional Indigenous political organizations marked a new era in the relationship between Natives and newcomers.5

I want to begin with the Numbered Treaties because I feel that they are central to understanding the historical and legal relationship between Indigenous peoples in Canada and the federal government, particularly in western Canada. The treaties were the first promises made by Canada to various Indigenous nations and have become the foundation for many contemporary land claims. It also appears, however, to be one of the most generally misunderstood aspects of history in Canada to non-Indigenous peoples. J.R.

Miller, an historian who focuses on Native/newcomer relationships in Canada, notes that,

5 J.R. Miller is attributed to coining the phrase “Natives and newcomers.” J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Canada’s Treaty-Making Tradition, Michael Keenan Lecture (Saskatoon: St. Thomas More College, 2007), 3.

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“Canadians do not understand the history of treaties between the Crown and First

Nations, nor the implications of these agreements for contemporary society.”6

To emphasize the point about the general lack of knowledge related to the treaties and the historical relationship between Indigenous peoples in Canada with the federal government, I want to briefly explore contemporary racial relations in Alberta by using an example. The reasons for societal discrimination of Indigenous peoples are historical, complex, and intertwined with various elements and motivations that come in multiple actions and specifically, in the form of Canadian government policy. In Canada, racism operates in a myriad of ways but often stems from an absence of an historical understanding of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the colonization of

Canada. Racist comments that are consistently made in settler communities are related to an ignorance of treaties and Aboriginal rights. Thomas King, a Cherokee writer currently teaching English literature at the University of Guelph, tells his story of moving to

Lethbridge, Alberta in 1988 and purchasing a house. In his book, The Unidentified

Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, King explores many themes in the history of Indigenous/settler relations in both the United States and Canada and gives particular attention to the colonial legal history of North America that relates to

Indigenous affairs.7 He tells the histories of genocide in mid-western United States, residential schools in Canada, and the forced removal and displacement of Indigenous peoples from their traditional lands in the name of Euro-American colonial settlement,

6 J.R. Miller, Lethal Legacy: Current Native Controversies in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Ltd., 2004), 108.

7 Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2012).

17 but what is also shocking and equally disturbing are the continued racist attitudes that perpetuate throughout contemporary Canadian and American settler societies.

After buying a house in Lethbridge in 1988, Thomas King received a flyer in his mailbox from a local realtor that notified residents that a “Treaty 7 family” had moved to the neighbourhood. The residents are, therefore, encouraged to call the realtor if they wish to sell their homes implying that their property prices are sure to go down.8 Funny, King thinks to himself, I’m a Cherokee, not a Treaty 7 status-Indian; the realtor must be meaning someone else. Treaty 7 was signed between the federal government and the

Blackfoot Confederacy in 1877. King quickly realized, however, that “a Treaty 7” had nothing to do with the actual Treaty number 7, but was being used as a racial code word for “Indian.” King became angry. Along with a few other disgruntled people living in

Lethbridge, complaints were made, both to the City of Lethbridge and to the media. Their complaints were basically dismissed and they were told to “calm down.”

Twenty years later in 2007, at a Tim Horton’s in Lethbridge, an employee placed a sign on the drive-through window that read, “No Drunk Natives.”9 King observed in the local newspapers that for every comment expressing outrage about this public display of racism, there were just as many comments printed that were in agreement with the substance of the statement.10 In Lethbridge, as in many other communities in Alberta that border reserves, public forms of racism have existed as recently as 1988 and 2007. We

8 King, 183-186.

9 King, 186.

10 King, 187.

18 see similar sentiments expressed again and again from settlers living in communities across Canada as seen by contemporary land-based conflicts in Oka and Caledonia.

The Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights published Indigenous peoples’ perspectives regarding racism in Alberta in 2010 in the report, “The Aboriginal

Perspective on Human Rights in Alberta.” In regards to provincial employment, the report stated that, currently, Native peoples experience twice the unemployment rate, 7.7%, as non-Native peoples. The reasons given were that employment retention rates of

Indigenous-identified peoples were low because of “feelings of isolation at work, lack of workplace role models, and lack of Aboriginal people in management.”11 It was found that within the workplace, Native workers experienced discrimination and racism by employers, management, and co-workers. Employers were ignorant of barriers faced by people with culturally diverse backgrounds and co-workers and management practiced discrimination through “racial slurs, inappropriate behaviours, and resistance to diversity initiatives.”12

The report specifically discussed perspectives of treaty and Aboriginal rights. The researchers found that while some Indigenous peoples in Alberta knew about the special provisions outlined through treaty agreements, others had internalized the idea that treaty provisions were “hand-outs” from the government.13 There is a strong link between the ongoing actions of discrimination that occur in the form of racism with a

11 Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights and Justice. Stanley Venne, Muriel, chair, Cardinal, Lewis, co-chair, The Aboriginal Perspective on Human Rights in Alberta, (Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights and Justice, Edmonton, 2010) 17.

12 Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights, 17.

13 Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights, 24.

19 misunderstanding of historical treaty relationships between the state and Indigenous leaders. An historical understanding of the treaty process taken by non-Indigenous peoples, and therefore knowledge of the history of Aboriginal and treaty rights that are behind the development of contemporary land claim settlements and negotiations, are the first steps that are necessary to reverse these acts of racism in settler communities.

Development of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was the vehicle by which the federal state has addressed Aboriginal rights and territorial claims in Canada through the Treaty

Commission process. In brief, the Proclamation loosely acknowledged Indigenous land rights by specifically stating that the Crown must purchase the land from the Indigenous peoples of the various regions before resources could be extracted or European immigrants could settle on it.14 Settlers, as individuals, do not have the right to purchase lands from Indigenous peoples; purchases must be made through a representative of the

Crown. After the Confederation Act of 1867, the responsibility of negotiating and obtaining Indigenous lands was passed from the Crown to new government of the state of

Canada.

The relationship between Indigenous peoples and Euro-Canadians began to shift in the mid 19th century. Where the newcomers once saw Indigenous peoples as allies and trade partners in military endeavours and the fur trade, the era of agricultural settlement in the mid to late 19th century saw Europeans view Indigenous communities as obstacles to

14 James B. Waldram, As Long as the Rivers Run: Hydroelectric Development and Native Communities in Western Canada (Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 1988), 27.

20 colonial settlement.15 In this regard, for the next seventy-five years, beginning in 1850, efforts by the state, whether the state acted through the Crown or Canada, would be directed toward purchasing the land northwest of Upper Canada from the Indigenous peoples who lived there.16 The Canadian state and representatives of the Crown also played definitive roles in more malicious acts of dispossessing Native peoples from large tracts of land and resettling them on reserves.17 These efforts were not done without simultaneously making efforts to assimilate Indigenous peoples into Euro-Canadian society; paradoxically, however, it was state segregation and isolation policies in conjunction with assimilation policies that kept Indigenous communities from succeeding in the market-capitalist economy. By 1929, after the last adhesion to the numbered treaties, Indigenous peoples had ceded two thirds of Canada to the federal government through treaties and scrips.18 After signing treaties, Indigenous peoples were displaced onto small reserves and subjected to a slew of policies aimed, either directly or indirectly,

“to change their way of life so that it would resemble that of Euro-Canadians.”19

15 Following the War of 1812 and the union of the HBC and the Northwest Trading Company in 1821, marking the end of the eastern-based commercial fur trade economy, policies toward Indigenous peoples began to change. Miller, Lethal Legacy, 15, 66, 67.

16 While there were treaties signed between representatives of European nation-states and individual Indigenous nations prior to 1850, for our purposes the Treaty negotiations began with the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior Treaties, as these were the first to include annuities and reserve land as well as the cessation of large tracts of land with multiple Indigenous nations. Miller, Dickason.

17 Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press) 2002.

18 Waldram, 54.

19 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 15.

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The precedent for the Numbered Treaties began with the Robinson Treaties that were signed in 1850 between the Crown and the Huron people of northwestern Ontario.

The Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior Treaties cover much of the area in Northern

Ontario that is near Lake Huron and Lake Superior. They are significant because they were the first agreements that included annuity payments, provisions for reserves, and the continued right to hunt and fish.20 The Robinson Treaties were also the first treaties that involved the Indigenous cessation of large tracts of land to the colonial governments for purposes of newcomer settlements and resource extraction. The most important element of the Robinson Treaties to this discussion is that the treaties made a distinct provision that First Nations peoples would continue to have the right to hunt, fish, and trap in all ceded lands.21

The Hudson’s Bay Company surrendered Rupert’s Land to the Dominion

Government of Canada in 1870, placing the northwest of Canada in the hands of the newly formed federal government. The shift in control over trade in the region also meant the eventual end of the fur trade as the region’s main means of economic organization.

The Canadian state, now responsible for the Northwest, began the process of the

“Numbered Treaties.” As colonial settlement and resource development grew northwest, the geography and natural landscape of the region became an important factor and, therefore, larger areas of land needed to be included. Two waves of treaty commissions were sent from Ottawa to the Northwest.

20 Waldram, 28.

21 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 124.

22

Treaties 1 through 7 were the first wave of treaties signed in the Northwest22 and were designed to primarily attain land for the agrarian settlement of immigrants from

Europe and the already established Euro-Canadians. The treaties were not necessarily enforced upon the Indigenous populations in the Northwest by the Canadian government and were, in fact, often requested by many Indigenous leaders. Due to the demise of the fur trade and the decimation of buffalo numbers across the prairies, poverty and disease spread amongst Indigenous peoples. In the prairies, it was also clear that the increasing presence of non-Indigenous settlements would become an inevitable reality for the region.

Declining buffalo and encroaching Euro-Canadian farmers led many Indigenous people to believe that treaties were the last resort for an already changing way of life.23 To make situations more precarious, American expansionism and Imperialism into the plains of

North America caused First Nations, Métis, and Euro-Canadian settlers to fear the loss of land and the development of a hostile environment between Americans, Canadian settlers, and Indigenous peoples; an agreement between all parties was necessary.

Treaties were negotiated in divergent cultural contexts. Canada’s representatives were educated within a literate and legalistic society, whereas Indigenous leaders based governance and knowledge on oral tradition.24 The belief of the Indigenous leaders who signed the initial treaties was that the treaties represented an agreement of reciprocity in which the Euro-Canadian use of land was allowed in return for various items such as

22 “Northwest” is capitalized in most cases to indicate that the area covered by the numbered treaties is a geopolitical region rather than a direction or geographical region, like the “west,” “north,” or “prairies.”

23 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 136.

24 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 139.

23 annuities and reserve land, whereas the colonial representatives thought of the agreements as a form of private land cessation entrenched by colonial law. The unequal positions of power between Indigenous leaders and the representatives of the federal government lay in the fact that the treaties were recognized on written documents in which the terms were spelled out in English. An example of the federal government’s recognition of the treaties as a legalistic contract rather than a compact made with Indigenous peoples is shown by its continuing disbursement of five dollar annuity payments to individuals with legal status after one hundred and thirty years of inflation, which was, realistically, an exact term of the treaties.25 In order to understand the true intent of the treaties, contemporary historians have used various archival materials such as journals and other notes, as well as oral history accounts of the people present at signings.26

The Blackfoot Confederacy, along with other First Nations in the southern prairie region, signed Treaty 7, the last of the prairie treaties, in 1877 near Gleichen, Alberta.

Disease and starvation were simultaneously spreading throughout the prairies amongst

Native communities. Despite the pleas from Indigenous leaders to the Indian Affairs

Department for help, little attention was paid to the conditions of First Nations and Métis people on the prairies.27 The Indigenous signatories of Treaties 1 through 7 felt betrayed by the federal government. The terms of the treaties were signed in the context of

25 Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant.

26 Rene Fumoleau, As Long As This Land Shall Last: A History of Treaty 8 and Treaty 11, 1870-1939 (Calgary: U of C Press, 2004).

27 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 144.

24 misunderstandings and deliberate attempts by the state to deceive Indigenous leaders.28

Miller points out that the terms of the “true spirit and intent” of the treaties refers to “the necessity to update the treaties in light of treaty commitments to a relationship that would ensure the maintenance of what they had, their freedom and livelihood, as well as additional benefits flowing from the ‘bounty and benevolence’ of the Crown.”29

The second wave of treaties, 8-11, was signed between 1899 and 1929. James

Waldram discusses the signing of these treaties from a political economic approach, emphasizing unequal distribution of power and the economic motivation behind both groups’ intentions. Waldram labels the treaties as “northern resource development treaties” and were completed quickly with even less negotiation between Indigenous leaders and Treaty commissioners.30 Both sets of treaties reflected the economic ambitions of the southern and mostly Euro-Canadian populated regions of Canada, and both resulted in “southern indifference and neglect.”31 The newly formed Department of

Indian Affairs had little involvement in northern communities at this point and often ignored the northern communities when they requested social assistance. The treaties were signed expediently reflecting the push for Canada’s resource development agenda.

A Privy Council report in 1891 recommended that treaties be signed in order to secure

28 Walter Hildebrandt, Dorothy First Rider & Sarah Carter, The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996).

29 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 145.

30 Waldram, 31.

31 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 148.

25

Crown ownership of the regions with “petroleum” and “other minerals and substances of economic value.”32

Treaty 8 was the largest treaty to be signed in 1899 and covers northern Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and small tracts of land in northern Saskatchewan and the

Northwest Territories. Prior to the signing of Treaty 8, many Indigenous nations along the

Athabasca and Peace River were actively involved in the fur trade. Rene Fumoleau and

Liza Piper have written extensively about the Treaty 8 region from an environmental historical perspective, bringing the natural environment of the region into the narrative as a major player and essential element in the events shaping the region of Treaty 8 & 11.

Communities formulated hybrid economies that relied on a mix of traditional subsistence activities as well as newly introduced economic activities linked to the fur trade.

By 1899, due to the collapse of the fur trade, Indigenous communities in this region experienced increasing levels of poverty and disease. An emerging fear of mass settlement came about as the Indigenous population living along the major lakes and rivers began to note more prospectors traveling up the waterways in search of Yukon gold.33 There was a shared fear amongst northern Indigenous peoples that, without a treaty, they would lose their traditional lifestyle as well as the land they hunted, trapped, and fished upon. The signing of a treaty gave the illusion that compensation was necessary to make up for the looming market failure of the fur trade. Treaty signing ostensibly meant the continuance of traditional hunting, trapping, and fishing –the only way, it was felt at this point, that Indigenous communities would be able to maintain any

32 Waldram, 36

33 Fumoleau, xxvi.

26 sort of economy at all. Suspicions arose toward the treaty commissions, however, after hearing of the circumstances that followed the signings of treaties in the prairies. Overall, the emphasis and main concern to Indigenous peoples in the north was the protection of their traditional subsistence economy and ways of life.

“Treaty 8” was first coined as a term on January 7, 1899, by the newly named

Indian Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, David Laird. On June 2, 1899, Laird and his treaty party, set out from Athabasca Landing, just north of Edmonton, along the

Athabasca River, in efforts to seek out leaders of Cree and Dene nations in order to sign

Treaty 8. Laird’s expectations were that all Indigenous leaders in the Athabasca-

Mackenzie district would sign the treaty by the end of the summer. The treaty commissioners hoped to have an expeditious treaty signing. These hopes disappeared as they realized the targeted landmass was too large to travel during the summer and that the trepidations or hesitations of Indigenous leaders to sign the treaty would affect the length of their stays.

The initial boundaries for Treaty 8 that were set by the federal government were designed to cover the valleys of the Athabasca and Peace Rivers north of the Treaty 6 area as well as the valleys of the Nelson, upper Peace, and Upper Liard Rivers in British

Columbia.34 Laird’s decision to use natural boundaries was based on his observations that most non-Indigenous people were traveling the northwestern lakes and rivers to reach the

Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon. He felt that “[t]he territory watered by the Lesser

Slave Lake, the Peace and Athabasca Rivers, the Athabasca Lake, the South of Great

Slave Lake and their tributaries, was where these whites were finding their way, and the

34 Fumoleau, 51.

27

Commissioners did not deem it necessary to extend Treaty 8 farther than they did.”35

Laird’s considerations of the needs of the settlers suggest that the Treaty Commission’s motives were mostly based on the economic intentions of settlers and the federal government as well as the limitations caused by the natural landscape. After setting these boundaries and beginning the journey, the Treaty Commission party quickly understood that the region was too large to travel through in one summer. The signing of Treaty 8 was, therefore, extended into the summer of 1900.

Suspicions had already flared amongst Indigenous communities in the north as the miners and prospectors began to arrive. The Treaty Commissioners quickly understood that negotiations would not be as expedient as expected; specific interests of the

Indigenous leaders would need to be acknowledged. One of the Treaty Commissioners,

McKenna, advised the Department to include a provision for environmental protection in the terms of the treaty because he was “convinced that the forest fires caused by prospectors last year have so angered the Indians that some specific undertaking as to protection will have to be given.”36 It was clear that the protection of the bush economy in the north was the major concern for the Indigenous populations living in the region. The

Treaty Commissioners quickly realized that the only way to convince the Indigenous leaders to sign Treaty 8 would be to effectively ensure each leader that they would continue to be free to hunt, fish and trap as a means of subsistence and that their rights to

35 Fumoleau, 53.

36 Fumoleau, 60.

28 continue this way of life would be protected from non-Indigenous newcomers to the region.37

Indigenous leaders first signed Treaty 8 at Lesser Slave Lake on June 21, 1899.

The terms of the treaty were construed in Ottawa, and it remains unclear how much the

Native leaders understood of the written document. There is evidence, however, that it was clear to the treaty commissioners that the main concerns of the Indigenous leaders were to continue their ways of life, yet the commissioners did not fully understand what that meant. Initially, the commissioners believed northern Indigenous peoples’ ways of life were similar to Indigenous peoples on the prairies. Chief Moostoos, a Cree leader present at Treaty 8 signing, replied to the Chief Commissioner: “a Plains Indian turned loose in the bush would get lost and starve to death.”38

To protect their traditional subsistence economy Indigenous leaders consistently made the point that they would not sign, “unless their right to hunt, trap and fish was guaranteed and it must be understood that these rights they would never surrender.”39 The bush economy of the north meant the livelihood to Indigenous communities and, at this time, the survival of the northern bush economy almost entirely depended on the features of the natural landscape. Waldram emphasizes this point in stating that the “true backbone of northern Native economy was not, and is not, the land, but rather the lakes, rivers, and streams.”40 It was in this regard that the Indigenous leaders present at Lesser Slave Lake,

37 Fumoleau, 60.

38 Fumoleau, 73.

39 Fumoleau, 74.

40 Waldram, 5.

29 on this day, signed Treaty 8 and regarded that treaty as a promise made on behalf of

Queen Victoria, “which was to last as long as the grass grew, the river ran, and the sun shone.”41

The signing at Lesser Slave Lake set a precedent for the remainder of Treaty 8 signings. Indigenous leaders consistently emphasized the need for a guarantee from the commissioners that their ways of life would not be tampered with by non-Indigenous settlement and colonial activities in the area. The treaty commissioners made the promises that their ways of life would be respected and the encroachment of Euro-

Canadian settlers would not inhibit their use of the land. If these conditions were promised to the Indigenous leaders present at the posts where the treaty was signed, then the Crown was free to utilize the land for their own purposes.42

During the summer of 1899, the commission party continued to gain signatories at

Fort Chipewyan, Fond du Lac, and Smith’s Landing-Fort Smith. A new commissioner was named the following year; in the summer of 1900, A.J. Macrae finalized the signing of Treaty 8 at Fort Resolution. At all locations, Indigenous leaders expressed similar sentiments about the continuance of hunting, fishing, and trapping. Concerns that varied from place to place were also raised. In Fort Chipewyan, for example, Indigenous leaders requested that the government make provisions for a Catholic school because Catholicism was the religion practiced by most of the habitants.43

The early suspicions of Indigenous leaders toward the treaty commission process remained throughout the signings. Rumours had reached the north about the conditions of

41 Fumoleau, 74.

43 Fumoleau, 77.

30 the Indigenous populations to the south and east of the Athabasca District, mostly prairie communities. A significant difference for the Indigenous communities in the north was their lack of interest in obtaining reserve land. Their interest was in moving freely to fulfill the activities that made up the basis of their local economies and ways of life. At the last signing, at Fort Resolution, Chief Drygeese told the agent, “Don’t hide anything that I don’t hear. Maybe later on you are going to stop us from hunting or trapping or chopping trees down or something. So tell me the truth. I want to know before we take treaty.”44 After Drygeese was assured that access to land use would not be tampered with, the Chief asked the Agent for a written promise that the land would never be taken away from them. The Agent agreed and after this line of business was conducted and these promises were made, treaty money was taken and the Treaty Commission was on its way.

The meeting with Drygeese in the summer of 1900 closed the signing of Treaty 8.

The purposes of the federal government’s motives in signing Treaty 8 were multi- faceted and reflected both the political and economic intentions of the state interconnected with the realities and attributes of the natural environment of the north. A significant difference in the signing of Treaty 8 from the prairie treaties was the lack of surveillance and administrative regulations that affected movement and lifestyle choices.

There was no pass system and the presence of the North West Mounted Police was minimal. Smoothing relationships between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples was, ultimately, the driving forces behind signing treaties expeditiously. The natural boundaries chosen by the treaty commissioners reflected Euro-Canadian settler activities in the region, not Indigenous peoples’ desires to sign a treaty, thereby excluding

44 Fumoleau, 97.

31 many Indigenous communities that were further inland and isolated from the major travel routes of settlers.

Resistance efforts toward European settlement in North America, including the events surrounding the resistance by the Métis and First Nations people during the Red

River Rebellion, proved to the newly formed Canadian government that it was absolutely necessary to design treaties as a method of attaining land prior to settlement.45 The history of treaty-making in Canada had two objectives: for the Crown and Dominion government to legally obtain land for settlement of European immigrants and Canadians from the east; and to avoid conflicts with the Indigenous populations on the land that was desired for colonial settlement or resource development or both. To Indigenous peoples, however, treaties were seen as more of a reciprocal agreement that allowed the use of the land by colonial settlers for agriculture and resource development, so long as Indigenous peoples were free to continue a way of life that existed prior to the arrival of the Euro-Canadians as well as to be assisted by the Crown in times of need. Contemporary conflicts, however, continue to arise from this history.

Assimilation Policies of the Federal Government of Canada

The system and concept of reserves in Canada is tightly connected to the history of the treaty commission process and has been essential to the colonization of North

45 The statement refers to the Red River Resistance, the Northwest Rebellion, and the conflict on the prairies with Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont, Big Bear, and Poundmaker. The outcomes were the execution of Riel and eight other Cree people as well as the deaths of Big Bear and Poundmaker due to their imprisonment. The events indicate the power of the colonial government; nevertheless, the conflict itself revealed the commitment toward Indigenous resistance and overall distrust of the colonial encroachment of the Northwest. It was necessary for the government to enter into treaty negotiations and accrue land in this matter in order to avoid further bloodshed. Miller, Dickason.

32

America. Cole Harris uses the historical geography of reserves in British Columbia to illustrate how geographical space interacts with politics, the state, and culture in dynamic ways to shape how Native space is allotted. Reserve development in the region began following the first settlement of a colony in 1849 at Vancouver Island.46 Following the establishment of the settlement, Native groups were pushed onto small reserves without large treaties, unlike the reserve system operating in the Northwest where reserves covered a much larger territory and had the numbered treaties as a part of the process. In comparison to the Northwest, the development of reserves in British Columbia occurred earlier and left more pieces of fractured land creating less opportunity to continue traditional subsistence activities as a part of the economical structure of communities.

Life for on-reserve Native people became a matter of finding “some mix of on- and off- reserve occupations that would allow them to keep body and soul together while maintaining a connection with the particular land of their ancestors.”47 Most Indigenous communities in British Columbia today remain without a treaty; the legal implications of the situation remain unclear.

Harris’ important work considers the colonial construction of space in the unequal spatial distribution of land between the Natives and the Crown, the dispossession of people from their land and the repossession of the land by others, and the material implications on the ways of life of Native communities related to the new reserve geography that was being enforced.48 Harris’ approach to his research has been to

46 Harris, xviii.

47 Harris, 274.

48 Harris, xxiv, xxx.

33 construct a historical narrative of geographical change and to tell the story of the colonial construction of space in British Columbia. Harris makes a materialist argument as well as a cultural argument that is rooted in Imperial racism; there was no conception of class amongst Native peoples at the time therefore the interaction occurred between opposing cultures. The main tool of the colonizer has been “disciplinary power.” Drawing on the ideas of Michel Foucault and Franz Fanon, Harris points out that the legitimacy of the reserve system in British Columbia depended on the management of land and the

“normalization” of groups through residential schools, missions, and waged labour.49 The reorganization of space was managed and enforced through laws, courts, and jails.50

People living in British Columbia, both Indigenous and settler, were compelled to follow the laws of private property due to a fear of incarceration; economic decisions were made based on this fear. Apart from private property laws, the movement of Indigenous peoples was managed through racial segregation enforced by state coercion as well.

Entire government departments were organized to manage the movement of

Indigenous peoples in Canada. The Department of Indian Affairs was a branch of the federal government designed to administer the lives of First Nations in Canada. While

Department policies may have changed since its conception, one of the main goals of the federal department, mostly throughout the twentieth century, has been an attempt to systemically absorb and integrate First Nations into mainstream Euro-Canadian society

49 Harris, 268.

50 Harris, 271.

34 through the process of assimilation.51 Through various legislation and policies, including the Indian Act and residential school policies, it is clear that the department’s intentions were to assimilate First Nations rather than protect their ways of life through treaty commitments and continuing to protect the property rights of settlers. The comment made by the deputy minister of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, in 1920 to a parliamentary committee supports the idea that assimilation policies were the intentions of the Department of Indian Affairs:

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that this country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… That has been the whole purpose of Indian education and advancement since the earliest times. One of the very earliest enactments was to provide for the enfranchisement of the Indian. So it is written in our law that the Indian was eventually to become enfranchised. Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.”52

Scott made this assertion to a parliamentary committee in 1920. Miller points out that the Bill was an amendment to the Indian Act that would give him the power to enfranchise any Indigenous male with status that he sees “fit.”53

Legislation and policies later implemented by the Department of Indian Affairs for the purposes of assimilation were in clear contradiction to the treaties. The most

51 Miller asserts that, “whatever the label [of the Department of Indian Affairs], the central goal of controlling and unmaking Indians has remained its mandate until very recently.” Lethal Legacy, 34

52 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 35. Miller’s footnote cites Scott’s quote in John Leslie and Ron Maguire, eds., The Historical Development of the Indian Act, 2nd ed. (1975: Ottawa: Indian Affairs and Northern Development 1983)116.

53 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 35.

35 notable and relevant to this research was the Indian Act and its various amendments as well as the long history of residential school policies. Direct attempts made by the

Department of Indian Affairs and the federal government at assimilating Indigenous communities included, though are not limited to, deciding who had access to legal status and, thereby, having access to treaty rights, the control over movement into and out of reserves, and the removal and displacement of Indigenous children throughout the twentieth century from their communities into residential schools that were aimed at re- educating Indigenous children in efforts to eventually enfranchise them in to mainstream

Canadian society. Throughout the twentieth century, following the signing of the treaties, residential school systems resulted in the displacement of an entire generation of

Indigenous children. The intergenerational effects of this trauma are still experienced by communities today.54 Intergenerational trauma within Indigenous communities has roots in the early days of colonialism and nation-state making.

The first Indian Act passed in Canada in 1876. This was coupled with the creation of a federal department to specifically address affairs pertaining to Indigenous peoples.

The Indian Act became the document that allowed the federal government to enforce decisions over Indian status and the movement of people into and out of reserves; the

Department of Indian Affairs became the apparatus that administered the Act. The Indian

Act initially defined what a “band” was and how that was determined. According to Olive

Dickason, a “band” is defined in the Act as “a body of Amerindians for whom the government has set aside lands for their common use and benefit; for whom the government is holding monies for their common use and benefit; or whom the Governor-

54 Bonnie Burstow, “Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work,” Violence Against Women, 9(11), November 2003, 1294.

36 in-General has declared a band.”55 The Act continues to define who is a member of the band based on a list as well as what a reserve is according to the Crown.

The federal government implemented an elective system that decides the leadership of a band.56 This elective system has countered the traditional leadership selection process. The selection process and the leadership of the band council, in many cases, has become a patriarchal system over the years that reflects a colonial government design rather than a traditional Indigenous governance system. The controversy rests in the legitimacy of the “Indian Act band councils.” Indian Act band councils have often become a point of contention in communities for community members who do not recognize the councils as legitimate forms of government.

Legislation had previously been introduced through the Indian Act that inequitably influenced the status of Indigenous men and women.57 Gender discrimination policies have since become one of the most contentious and divisive aspects of federal policy relating to Indigenous peoples. These policies coincide with Indian Affairs policies that were directed at trying to reduce the number of Indigenous peoples with official status for which the federal government was required to provide. This was particularly important for the federal government because, according to the terms of the treaties, the amount of annuities and provisions the newly formed state was required to provide increased as the numbers of people with status increased.

55 Dickason, 183.

56 Dickason, 183.

57 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 32, 33.

37

The government initially targeted Indigenous women. As outlined in the Indian

Act, official status was taken away from women who married a man without status. Their children were also without status, and therefore not entitled to Aboriginal and treaty rights.58 A provision was included that stated in the event that a woman without status married a man with status, that woman, as would their children, gain status. This clause created more discrimination and further divided communities over issues of status and access to Aboriginal rights because it dictated who members of the community were along the lines of gender. These provisions affected who had access to Aboriginal and treaty rights and who did not. Efforts were made to implement a Euro-Canadian patriarchal social order within Indigenous communities and political systems. Access to treaty rights and status did not only have implications over Indigenous identity, but also had material economic impacts on the lives of Indigenous peoples based along the lines of gender.

In the first half of the twentieth century, systemic gender discrimination was particularly harmful to Indigenous women. First Nations women in Ontario, many of whom were disenfranchised from their communities through the enforcement of Indian

Act regulations, were incarcerated at staggering numbers that doubled each decade the century wore on.59 Joan Sangster notes that in the Mercer, the only provincial reformatory for women in Ontario, the population of Native inmates increased from 2% in the 1920s

58 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 32.

59 Joan Sangster, “Criminalizing the Colonized: Ontario Native Women Confront the Criminal Justice System, 1920-1960,” in Through Feminist Eyes: Essays on Canadian Women’s History (Edmonton: AU Press, Athabasca University, 2011), 293-325.

38 to 10% in the 1950s while the population in Ontario of Native women remained at 1%.60

Many charges were linked to poverty and alcohol consumption.61 These causes for charge were outcomes of the urbanization of post-World War II, the growing effects of residential school policies, and the displacement of Indigenous peoples in northern communities.62 There is little doubt, however, that the overincarceration of Indigenous women in the first half of the twentieth century is related to colonial gender discrimination policy. Gender discrimination continued to be enforced through the Indian

Act until 1985 when Bill C-31 was passed in parliament. Following the eradication of gender discrimination according to status, it was decided that it would be up to the band to declare who maintained status and who did not.

On the prairies, administration of the lives of Indigenous peoples was harsh. John

Tobias notes that assimilation policies were more aggressive in the west as it was perceived by government administrators that Indigenous peoples west of Lake Superior were less civilized than Indigenous peoples in the east due to eastern peoples’ early interactions with European culture.63 A paradox emerged as federal government Indian policy goals of assimilating Indigenous peoples through eradicating cultures and identity

60 Sangster, 295.

61 Sangster, 295.

62 Sangster, 299, 300. Sangster notes that, “Women’s geographical origins and the locations of their convictions are significant, indicating one of the major causes of overincarceration: the spiraling effects of economic deprivation and social dislocation,” 299.

63 John Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada’s Indian Policy,” in As Long As the Sun Shines and the Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies, eds. Ian A.L. Getty and Anitone S. Lussier (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1983), 50.

39 failed the more they tried.64 In 1880, the new Indian Act gave the superintendent general of Indian Affairs the power “to deprive traditional leaders of recognition by stating that the only spokesperson of the band were those men elected according to the provisions of the Indian Act when the elective system was imposed.”65 The government then decided to prohibit many traditional practices of western Aboriginal communities including the sundances, potlatches, and give-aways because they were antithetical to European notions of individualism and private property.66 Efforts were made to dismantle the existing political systems and eradicate cultural traditions.

Many Indigenous communities of the prairies readily embraced new technologies and methods of agriculture as a means to supplement their subsistence economy due to the increasing scarcity of buffalo on the plains. Sarah Carter’s extensive study of the

Plains Cree peoples in southern Saskatchewan, signatories of the Qu’Appelle Treaty,

Treaty 4, in 1874, reveals the ways in which Indigenous peoples of the region embraced new methods of agriculture; however, it was the Canadian government’s desire to assimilate Indigenous peoples, politically, economically, and culturally, that kept

Indigenous communities from meaningfully entering the market economy.67 When traditional economies were in decline, Indigenous leaders in the prairies welcomed new technologies and training to augment their traditional knowledge, not replace it.

64 Tobias, 39.

65 Tobias, 45.

66 Tobias, 47.

67 Sarah, Carter, Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990) 13.

40

Nonetheless, the Canadian government saw their traditional values of the buffalo hunt and “tribal communism” as, again, antithetical to European notions of private property and individualism and therefore saw the need to eradicate those activities and systems from Indigenous ways of life.68 Religion, education, and work became the primary goals of Indian policy and the state utilized missionaries, residential schools, and agriculture as a means to achieve the civilization project of Indigenous peoples in the west.69 Indigenous communities were interested in adding to their local economies and thus creating hybrid structures to their ways of life, as they were not static communities.

They were not, however, interested in eradicating their entire way of life in order to resemble Euro-Canadians. The civilization and assimilation projects of the Canadian government resulted in the economic and social destruction of many prairie First Nations communities.

Environmental conditions, including inappropriate reserve selection, were a major factor in the failure of agricultural projects on the plains. This occurred throughout the reserve era as First Nations were placed onto reserves that had unsuitable land. Reserves were located outside the fertile belt and away from railroad transport facilities and local markets.70 Without arable land, a proper transport route for goods, and proximity to markets, Indigenous farmers were incapable of competing with Euro-Canadian farmers in the prairies. Carter notes that, “through a combination of neglect, a lack of understanding,

68 Carter, 16.

69 Carter, 22

70 Carter, 59.

41 and maladministration, the Indian received little encouragement in their efforts to diversify at a time when it was critical.”71

Even if environmental constraints did not restrict the continuance of a subsistence economy as well as the formation of viable farming practices, farmers still had legal barriers that inhibited them from accessing the market economy. The Department of

Indian Affairs implemented a pass system in 1885. Any Indigenous person with status wishing to leave the reserve needed to seek permission from the Indian Agent.72 Other pieces of legislation were introduced shortly thereafter. The legislation controlled the movements of people, including a permit system requiring the Indigenous prairie farmer to obtain a permit from the Indian Agent in order to transport produce to town for commercial purposes. The permit system was supposedly to avoid situations where settlers in the marketplace could take advantage of Indigenous farmers coming from the reserves.73 The reality for the Indigenous farmer was that one more barrier was placed in front of them from having freedom of movement within the capitalist market system.

Both the pass and permit systems denied Indigenous peoples with status and living on reserves from engaging in the market system. The pass and permit systems denied spaces of market capitalism to individuals with official status while federal government policies,

71 Carter, 78.

72 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 78.

73 Miller notes that, “The permit system required reserve producers to obtain a permit from the Indian Agent before taking produce to town for sale, ostensibly to protect the producer from ruthless townspeople.” He also notes that the permit and pass systems were introduced at the same time as severalty and “peasant farming” in order to encourage people on reserves to practice individual economics. All policies were aimed at economically assimilating Indigenous peoples while having the reality of controlling movement. Miller, Lethal Legacy, 250.

42 such as the reserve system and residential school policies, continued to encourage and coerce Indigenous peoples away from traditional lifestyles.

Systematic assimilation through the dispossession of land stemming from treaty negotiations, access to legal status and the control of movement through the Indian Act functioned as pieces of assimilation policy; however, at the end of the nineteenth century and throughout the majority of the twentieth century, the residential schools project became the most aggressive and obvious form of assimilation policy undertaken by the federal government. Residential schools also operated as a means of colonial dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land.74 Residential schools were particularly common in the prairie west, British Columbia, northwestern Ontario and the northern territories.75 Many Indigenous communities throughout Alberta were affected.

The relevance of discussing residential school operations to this research is in terms of how northern communities had been experiencing upheaval prior to the political events of the late 1960s. These circumstances caused by residential school policies are imperative in understanding the reactions and responses from Indigenous leaders and intellectuals toward the White Paper in 1969.

The lack of residential schools in the Eastern part of the country, including the

Maritimes, southern and eastern Ontario, and Quebec, was due to the fact that it was felt by the federal government that Indigenous peoples in the east had been in contact with

Europeans for a much longer time than had Indigenous peoples of the west. From the perspective of the colonial government the need for expedient assimilation was not as

74 Bryan Palmer, “Chapter 10: The ‘Discovery’ of the Indian,” Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: U of T Press, 2009) 382.

75 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 245.

43 necessary for eastern Indigenous communities as for Indigenous peoples of the

Northwest. This can also be seen through other measures taken toward Northwestern communities such as the banning of many spiritual ceremonies including the sundances of the prairies and the potlatch ceremonies of western coastal communities.

Residential schools have possibly had the most devastating intergenerational effects on Indigenous communities throughout Northwestern Canada. John Milloy notes that “it is clear that the schools have been, arguably, the most damaging of the many elements of Canada’s colonization of this land’s original peoples and, as their consequences still affect the lives of Aboriginal people today, they remain so.”76 Milloy, one of the leading researchers in Canada on the history of the residential school system, makes a few important points about the systemic structure of the schools that are relevant to this thesis’ discussion of assimilation policies. The Canadian government and the

Christian churches jointly managed residential school systems from 1879 until the closure of the last school in 1986. Throughout this period, Indigenous children were subjected to many forms of abuse and neglect by both the government and school personnel. The forms of abuse that took place have, over the years, surfaced into the public discussion of the travesties of the schools. The children were malnourished and died in overwhelming numbers of tuberculosis.77 “Chronic underfunding” by the government led to conditions of overcrowding, lax administrations, budget shortfalls and generally poor hygiene and diet.78 Recent historical health research has revealed that the federal government

76 John Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999) xiv.

77 Milloy, xv.

78 Milloy, xv.

44 knowingly collaborated with nutrition experts in experimental tests that were conducted on the bodies of school children; the children were intentionally malnourished in order to make observations for changes in their health using vitamin supplements.79 Physical abuse, made clear by the Department of Indian Affairs files, continued until the last school closed in 1986.80 Accounts of widespread instances of sexual abuse had also begun to surface in the later years of the twentieth century.

Two important points are relevant to this research about these tragedies that occurred for over a century: that the government and churches were aware and, therefore, complicit in the abuse, and that the abuse has had intergenerational effects on Indigenous communities in Canada. Regarding the first, it has become clear through archival research that the Department of Indian Affairs and the churches were aware that the abuse was occurring.81 Documentation exists of complaints made by children regarding abuse, and the Department did nothing to investigate or reprimand the personnel and clergy who the complaints were made against.82

Neglect occurs when those in a position of power have the ability to stop the abuse but avoid doing so. They become complicit in the crimes and are, therefore, also responsible for them. Once the decision was finally made to close the schools, the process took a considerable length of time. This was due to the fact that the schools had begun to

79 Ian Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942- 1952,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 46, 49 (May 2013): 145-172.

80 Milloy, xvii.

81 Milloy, xii.

82 Milloy, 296.

45 serve as a social service function and became a transitional point for children who were taken by the Department of Indian Affairs and the Children’s Aid Society; many were on wait for a non-Aboriginal foster family.83 The criminal element of this process and its relevance to the study of the regional community development in the Northwest – including communities in northeastern Alberta- is that the Department of Indian Affairs was aware that these instances of abuse and neglect were occurring and have had severe damages on Indigenous communities affected by residential school systems.

The second result of residential school system policies is the lasting impact the schools had on contemporary Indigenous communities. As earlier stated, assimilation policies have ultimately failed in their attempts to completely assimilate Indigenous peoples, but have had damaging effects on Indigenous communities throughout Canada – none more so than the history of residential schools. Milloy notes that, “the schools produced thousands of individuals incapable of leading healthy lives or contributing positively to their communities.”84

Indigenous resistance to residential schools met the painful impacts of the ongoing legacy. In 1970, in northeastern Alberta, a time of political radicalism amongst the

Indigenous populations of the region, some communities moved toward gaining control over the regional residential schools. Most notable for this research was the Blue Quills

School at St. Paul, Alberta. The regional Indigenous population, represented by the Indian

Association of Alberta and the Blue Quills Native Education Council, had heated discussions with the Department of Indian Affairs in which the regional pan-Indigenous

83 Milloy, xvi.

84 Milloy, xvii.

46 political organizations sought the transformation of the school to an Indigenous- controlled, self-governed school funded by the Department of Indian Affairs. The

Department of Indian Affairs agreed to the turnover of the school to the regional

Indigenous governance system, so long as the department was not required to fund the school; funding would be turned over to provincial jurisdiction.85

The issue was whether or not Indigenous peoples of a region had the right to oversee their own education. The battle between the two groups continued for over eight months and ended in an occupation of the school. Beginning in July 1970, until December of that year, as many as 1,000 people occupied the Blue Quills residential school.

Indigenous peoples, both Métis and First Nations from both Alberta and Saskatchewan, occupied the school during those months. The occupation gained public and political support from influential people like Tommy Douglas and David Lewis, leaders of the

New Democratic Party.86 The school received a phone call in December: the Department of Indian Affairs had agreed to transfer its management over to “properly constituted

Indian groups over the next two or three years.”87

After the public acknowledgement and open inquiries into the abusive conditions of the schools, Indigenous communities began to act together in an effort to seek justice.

Support groups and healing circles were formed, sexual abusers from the schools were prosecuted and charged with “multiple counts of gross indecency and sexual assault,” and demands from communities, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, were made for a public

85 Milloy, 236.

86 Milloy, 237.

87 Quote is from Milloy’s footnote 134 in “Chapter 10: Persistence: The Struggle for Closure,” Milloy, 237.

47 inquiry into the sexual abuse of students at residential schools.88 While the material implications of the acknowledgement of the abuse and neglect that occurred as a result of federal government assimilation policies have yet to be seen, it is important to note for our purposes that these acts of organized pan-Indigenous resistance stem from a long tradition of opposition to colonial assimilation policies.

Since the late nineteenth century, the federal government has administered the lives of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Miller comments on this development of the

Indian Act following Confederation by stating “the modern Canadian state was becoming more systematic in enforcing the boundaries between those with status and those who lacked it.”89 Systematic assimilation through government policy would prevail as the dominant theme of Aboriginal policies in the twentieth century leading up to the release of the White Paper. The policy paper was the final straw for First Nations political organizations. They had had enough of the many policies inflicting pain onto their communities. The late 1960s and early 1970s marked a turning point in organized

Indigenous resistance toward colonial policies that resulted in the loss of a way of life.

Pan-Indigenous, regional resistance did not, however, begin during these decades.

Pan-Indigenous Political Organizations and Resistance

Indigenous political organizations in North America existed before and throughout the arrival of Europeans, but it was in the 1960s that regional Indigenous groups began to effectively assert their rights and gain recognition on a national scale.

88 Milloy, 297

89 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 38.

48

Thomas King reflects that, “besieged by coyotes in Ottawa and Washington, Native people stopped asking for justice and started demanding it.”90 It is because of this movement that Indigenous peoples currently have some form of political representation acknowledged at the national level.91 Pan-Indigenous political organizations and

Indigenous resistance to colonial activities did not begin, however, in the late 1960s; they are part of a longer history of political action amongst Indigenous communities in

Canada. Resistance indicates the organization of Indigenous peoples in efforts to defend their communities against government-led assimilation policies as well as settler encroachment that negatively impacts the environment and, therefore, altering Indigenous ways of life. Pan-Indigenous, as a term, does not mean that political organizations were inclusive of all Indigenous peoples as many organizations have been exclusive to

Indigenous peoples with status; however, the term is used to indicate the collaborative efforts of multiple nations for the purposes of resistance. The term is also not historically accurate because organizations may not have identified themselves in this way, but “pan-

Indigenous” serves an important purpose for this thesis: the term allows us to recognize the political collaboration of multiple Native groups as a historical trend rather than a brief phenomenon.

In terms of successful resistance to European encroachment, pan-Indigenous political organization has been the most effective. Collaborative organization and tactics were used in earlier events that involved encroachment of European settlement onto

Indigenous traditional territory. Accounts of pan-Indigenous political organization as a

90 King, The Inconvenient Indian, 157.

91 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 49.

49 way to resist colonial settlement can be dated back to the Indigenous leader, Tecumseh, and his efforts to ward off European and American settlement in the Ohio Valley during the late 1700s and early 1800s92. He sided with the British because he saw them as the lesser of the two evils –at that point, it did not appear as though the British were interested in settlement as they were still concerned with commercial ventures in the fur trade.93 Tecumseh believed that no land belonged, in particular, to a single tribal nation; therefore, land could not be sold to settlers or the colonial governments by any single nation.94 Not only did Tecumseh advocate for pan-Indigenous organizing, but he also advocated for regional Amerindian alliances. The concept of formulating regional alliances was a departure from traditional tribal politics that had existed in the region south of Lake Michigan prior to the threat of colonial settlement.95

Communities were organized politically with one another on the grounds of the common threat of encroaching settlement and a shared environment. While cultural elements of language and traditions as well as governance systems were not generally shared amongst communities, geography and the use of natural landscape features for subsistence purposes politically and economically connected communities inter- regionally with one another. There has been a tradition for communities to form alliances and develop political organizations in an effort to protect a geographical region from destructive colonial activities, specifically settlement and resource extraction. While

92 Dickason, 128, 129.

93 Dickason, 128.

94 Dickason, 128.

95 Dickason, 129.

50

Tecumseh ultimately failed in his efforts to connect tribal communities that would stave off massive settlement, the Indigenous leader has been widely acclaimed as a powerful and influential leader in his resistance efforts toward the European and American colonization of the region. Due to his influence, efforts were made by the British and

French to gain the trust of Tecumseh with gifts at Amherstburg.96 This pattern of colonial governments attempting to appease influential Indigenous leaders who resisted colonial activities was much of the basis behind developing the treaty process and set a precedent for the ways in which Canada has been able to suppress Indigenous resistance movements.

Treaties were, in part, a response from the Crown and the Dominion Government toward Indigenous resistance against colonial settlement and resource activities.97 Miller notes that, “the background to the Robinson Treaties lay in Native resistance to mining on their lands in the latter part of the 1840s.” Commissioner Robinson was dispatched by the

Crown to the Garden River Ojibwa community in response to the threats made by Chief

Shingwaukonse about ejecting miners who had begun to arrive and started to mine.98 The

Robinson Treaties were a direct result of the resistance efforts of the Indigenous leaders of the region. The leaders were specifically concerned about the level of colonial activity related to natural resource extraction. Settlement and resource development appear to act with one another; in this regard, they are often met with regional resistance from

96 Dickason, 130.

97 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 124.

98 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 126.

51

Indigenous communities when the settlers or resource workers become a threat to the natural environment –the basis of many northern Indigenous economies and ways of life.

Perhaps the most influential moment of Indigenous resistance in the nineteenth century history in Canada was the Red River Resistance at the Red River settlement in

Manitoba in 1869-70 and the Northwest Rebellion that occurred in 1885. Many of the strengths of the Red River Resistance and the resistance of Indigenous peoples led by the leadership of Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont, Big Bear, and Poundmaker, involved pan-

Indigenous organization. Big Bear, like Tecumseh, was an influential Indigenous leader that supported regional, pan-Indigenous political organization in resistance to encroaching colonial settlements. Big Bear was concerned that the terms of Treaty 6 would, in effect, cause the Indigenous communities of the prairies to lose their political autonomy.99 Big

Bear was the last leader to sign Treaty 6. He signed in desperation for the survival of his people. The demise of the buffalo caused starvation and the effects of disease had begun to spread. Prior to the signing, Big Bear placed all his efforts into convincing regional

Indigenous leaders to resist signing Treaty 6; because of this, Ottawa changed the terms of the treaty to include a “medicine chest.”100

Big Bear was one of the most influential and effective Indigenous leaders of the nineteenth century’s early colonial settlement period of the Northwest. His influence and acclaim are due to his roles in the Northwest Rebellion and his persistent resistance to

Treaty 6. The fear of losing political autonomy over the region was the driving force behind his efforts to develop pan-Indigenous resistance. Apart from his resistance toward

99 One term of Treaty 6 stated, “Canadian law would become the law of the land.” Dickason, 195.

100 Dickason, 196.

52 the idea of losing political control through the treaties, Big Bear was highly influential in his role during the uprisings of the Northwest in the period between 1869 and 1885.

The Red River Resistance, like Garden River, forced Canada to enter into treaty negotiations. Miller notes, “Riel’s resistance was a reminder of the importance of negotiating in advance with Indigenous populations in the West.”101 Had it not been for

Riel, Big Bear, and the other Indigenous leaders involved in the uprisings, the government may not have been as concerned with treaty negotiations and the content of

Aboriginal rights prior to colonial settlement and resource development. Many of the contemporary rights being asserted by Indigenous communities in Canada today have their roots in those treaties that were designed to appease Indigenous peoples in the Euro-

Canadian settlement of the Northwest. A great achievement of the resistance led by Riel and Big Bear in the Northwest was the development of an alliance between Métis and

First Nations people. Due to the divisive nature of the Indian Act along status and gender lines, as well as residential school policies that separated people from their communities, the development of pan-Indigenous alliances became more difficult throughout the early twentieth century.102

In the past, political organization on the prairies was based around the economic ties of a community as well as military decision-making that often involved a pan-

Indigenous strategy for political purposes. The Blackfoot Confederacy of Southern

101 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 126.

102 The National Indian Brotherhood was a national political organization that developed in the twentieth century and initially represented Aboriginal people in Canada, including Métis, non-status, and status Indians. The organization, however, broke into the Métis Council of Canada to represent primarily Métis peoples and the Assembly of First Nations to represent status Indians. At the time of writing, there are currently no major political organizations in Canada that represent non-status Indigenous peoples.

53

Alberta consisted of various groups that co-operated with one another purely on a militaristic foundation despite their cultural and ethnic differences.103 The buffalo hunt in the prairies also brought out military leaders, such as Gabriel Dumont who would become famous for his leadership role alongside Louis Riel in the Red River Rebellion.104

Political organizations that developed in the northwest following the Red River

Rebellion, specifically the League of Indians of Western Canada, were under heavy surveillance by the RCMP. This affected the ability of people from various reserves within a region to meet with one another. The controlled movement of Indigenous peoples heavily influenced the ability to organize and resist the measures that were being taken by the federal government to control their communities. Poverty and disease in the

Northwest was also pervasive until 1930. These circumstances, according to Miller, were major reasons for the stunted growth of Indigenous political organization in the west. 105

The development of reserves through treaty negotiations and subsequent assimilation policies that were implemented effectively removed Indigenous peoples from the consciousness of non-Native society. The development of influential pan-Indigenous political organizations throughout the 1960s brought Indigenous issues and the concept of

Aboriginal rights back onto the national media scene.106 Indigenous political organization did not begin in the 1960s, but rather, was a larger, more unified, strategic effort in

103 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 61.

104 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 62.

105 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 78.

106 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 40.

54 gaining self-determination, thereby having the ability to reassert Indigenous systems of governance.107

Initially, the intentions of the relationship between Indigenous communities with the Crown and Dominion government had been established to benefit one another. The intent was to respect cultural differences; however, economy was, ultimately and influentially, the major motivation behind the treaty agreements. When economic motivations for the Northwest changed for the federal government, the relationship took on a coercive character and the colonial government consistently attempted to enfranchise

Indigenous peoples into mainstream, Euro-Canadian market capitalism. Market capitalism disregards existing culture and traditional subsistence economic structures because of its inherent concern with private property and individualism. Indigenous resistance toward coercion into an entirely capitalist-based system sprung from this legacy. Resistance has had various successes and impacts and remained a long-standing tradition in Canada. Despite the persistent efforts of Indigenous communities and political organizations to resist settler encroachment and intrusive Canadian policies throughout the history of the making of Canada, coercive policies of government and the racist attitudes of settlers and resource workers have had severe impacts on the material lives and communities of Indigenous peoples.108

107 An important example of an existing Indigenous governance system prior to the arrival of Europeans is the Iroquois Confederacy League. The elaborate and sophisticated institutions of the Iroquois developed the wampum belt that became a system of “passing communal historic information down to later generations by instructing a successor in the role of keeper of the belt’s memory.” Miller, Lethal Legacy, 58, 59.

108 Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights and Justice, 2010.

55

Chapter 2: Relationship Transformation: Radical Pan-Indigenous Political Organizations, 1968-1975

This chapter examines the development of pan-Indigenous political organizations in relation to industrial development in northeastern Alberta during the late 1960s and early 1970s. At this time Indigenous politics shifted toward a more militant and

Indigenous-led movement that transformed the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the federal government. Indigenous peoples and communities in the region collaborated to form political organizations in response to shifting national and provincial political economies. The organizations changed throughout the twentieth century and represented a new way of thinking about resource development in northeastern Alberta.

The impact of the radical politics of the Indian Association of Alberta, along with other notable regional, national, and transnational organizations in the 1960s, forced industry and government to acknowledge and reconsider the existing relationships they had with

Indigenous peoples in Canada when considering natural resource development. The radical politicization of organizations was successful in many ways, yet also had negative consequences.

In northeastern Alberta, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by a more aggressive development of political organizations as a means to protect treaty rights, thereby protecting land rights that were being increasingly jeopardized by industrial resource development. The Indian Association of Alberta became an important political vehicle during this time. The Indian Association primarily negotiated and represented the interests of Indigenous peoples with status in the province. The main priority of the association was to address the systemic conditions of poverty that had been developing on

56 reserves. The focal point of political action throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s was to gain recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights and to hold the federal government accountable to their initial promises made through the treaties.

The actions taken by Harold Cardinal and the Indian Association of Alberta in

1969 until the early 1970s represents the general radical movements of Indigenous political organizations of the time. Bryan Palmer characterizes the 1960s as “a period of self-discovery” for Indigenous peoples.109 Their efforts were to resist government policies that were felt to be detrimental to the growth of independent, strong, and healthy Native communities in Canada. The rejection of the White Paper, a policy statement aimed at assimilation of Indigenous peoples with status, led to the transformation of the relationship between Indigenous communities, the political organizations that represented them, and the federal government. The discussion of pan-Indigenous political organizations of the late 1960s begins with Citizens Plus, a document produced by the

Indian Association of Alberta that was presented to the federal government of Canada in

1970 as a response to the White Paper. Citizens Plus, also popularly known as the Red

Paper, led to Harold Cardinal’s influential book, The Unjust Society; the book was one of the first books written by an Indigenous person to join the canon of Canadian political and intellectual writing. The events of the late sixties and the subsequent publications of materials by Indigenous intellectuals are historical markers in the attempt to create a nation-to-nation relationship between Indigenous peoples of Canada and the Canadian state.

To bring us to 1968, and to understand why this was such a significant year for

Indigenous politics, I’ll examine the beginnings of contemporary Indigenous political

109 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 378.

57 organizations in Alberta which formed the foundation for the Indian Association of

Alberta. The initial pan-Indigenous political organizations were transformed throughout the twentieth century in relation to the political economic climate of the times and also as a result of the various forms of leadership. Leadership of the organizations were both

Indigenous and non-Indigenous. The changing attitudes toward non-Indigenous influence on Indigenous organizations played an important role in the prioritization of political goals as well as the methods used to address political agendas.

History of the Indian Association of Alberta

Johnny Calihoo and Malcolm Norris founded the Indian Association of Alberta in

1939. The Indian Association’s initial members left the pan-Indigenous organization,

League of Indians of Western Canada, which had been operating since 1928, in order to create their own organization that specifically represented First Nations with official status in Alberta. Calihoo and Norris left the League of Indians to form the Indian

Association of Alberta to address Indigenous peoples living in Alberta rather than the prairies in general. The Indian Association of Alberta developed as a “direct response to the poor social and economic conditions experienced by many Alberta reserve communities.”110 The organization’s initial priorities were asserting and protecting treaty rights as well as developing a stronger relationship with the federal government.111 The changing political and economic landscape in Canada during the post-World War II years influenced the development of the new organization.

110 Laurie Meijer Drees, Indian Association of Alberta: A History of Political Action (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002) xiv.

111 Drees, xv.

58

The Indian Association of Alberta was organized in response to the changing ways of life for Indigenous peoples. Those changes were mostly a result of state legislation including the numbered treaties, the Indian Act, and subsequent legislation that did not directly pertain to Indigenous peoples but, nevertheless, influenced traditional subsistence economies on the reserve.

Indigenous peoples came under the federal jurisdiction of the Indian Act in 1876.

The Indian Act created the reserve system and later amendments were responsible for the residential school system. The Indian Act gave more power and authority to the Indian

Agent who represented the Crown than it gave to First Nations people.112 First Nations with official Indian status began to fear that their treaty rights, as sacred agreements with the Crown, would change. Considering that access to and a continuance of traditional ways of life were the highest priority for Indigenous peoples living in Alberta, especially for those communities in the north, it was apparent that the treaties and the Indian Act were in conflict with one another.113

The state introduced multiple forms of repression. The Indian Act has had the effect of administering and regulating the lives of Indigenous peoples, particularly those living on the reserve. The loss of access to the bush was a consequence of the Act and resulted in diminishing the viability of traditional subsistence economies and forcing dependency on wage labour. The North West Mounted Police introduced the pass system,

112 “Canada’s First Peoples: The Indian Act of Canada.” www.firstpeoplesofcanada.com. Retrieved September 27, 2012.

113 According to Drees, the Indian Act regulated Indigenous peoples in a number of different ways including: “who could be considered an Indian, therefore, who could live on reserves, [a] controlled band membership, regulat[ing] the education of Indian children, [the] use of reserve lands, sale of agricultural products and other resources produced on the reserve, and outlined activities of local band councils.” 12.

59 making it illegal for people with status to leave the reserve without obtaining permission from the Indian Agent and thus regulated movements of people into and out of the reserve; it became increasingly difficult to reach outside markets.114 In addition to this, the century-long systemic removal of children from their families and communities in order to be placed in residential schools resulted in a widespread loss of inter-generational knowledge related to traditional subsistence economies. The complicated nature of these developments intertwining with one another made it difficult for people to navigate the law and conditions of their communities. This was the environment in which the Indian

Association of Alberta was formed.

The Indian Association of Alberta began with socialist roots in 1939. The Métis

Association of Alberta, a political organization advocating collectivist principles, helped the fledgling organization by making their constitution available to them. There were also tight connections with the United Farmers of Alberta who were connected with the Co- operative Commonwealth Federation. The United Farmers of Alberta and the labour movement initially began the concept of a new national socialist political party in Calgary in 1932. One year later, the Regina manifesto was signed and the Co-operative

Commonwealth Federation came into action; the United Farmers of Alberta affiliated with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation at this time.115 The original Indigenous leaders of the Indian Association of Alberta were mostly socialist intellectuals from

Edmonton or labourers from the northeastern regions of the province.116 The initial

114 Dickason, 207.

115 Alvin Finkel, The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta, (Toronto: U of T Press, 1989) 20.

116 Drees, 19.

60 general meetings of the Indian Association of Alberta were held in northern Alberta at

Saddle Lake, Cold Lake, Kehewin and Frog Lake.117

Organization was difficult. At this time, people living on reserves in southern

Alberta who had profited from agriculture in the early twentieth century, namely the

Blood and the Blackfoot nations, had little interest in the organization. Indigenous communities in the south were not interested in supporting an organization that was mostly run by poverty-stricken communities of the north.118 The decline of the local farms and the subsequent urbanization following the increased industrialization associated with World War 2, however, laid the impetus for those southern Indigenous communities to seek greater representation with the provincial government. Until 1952 when the first woman delegate attended a meeting, the Indian Association of Alberta primarily consisted of Native men, apart from the women who helped with the meals at the annual general meetings.119 Police surveillance often accompanied the meetings under the guise of possible infractions to the Indian Act, particularly the prohibition of alcohol.120

National political and economic changes continued to affect regional and provincial Indigenous political organizations, contrasting with provincial changes.

Following World War 2, Canada was shaped by two major political and economic trends that had various impacts on reserves across the country: the increased industrialization of

117 Drees, 20.

118 Drees, 34.

119 Drees, 38.

120 Drees, 40.

61 the Canadian economy and the accelerated urbanization of the Euro-Canadian population, with accompanying demand for industrial labour, as well as the formation of federal social welfare policies including more collectivist programs such as the Unemployment

Insurance Act and the Family Allowance Act.121 In Alberta, however, the provincial government had begun to embrace stronger conservative and resource protectionist ideals and policies. During this time, the Social Credit government became more business and market capitalist-oriented in their efforts to prosper from resource extraction.122

Initially, Alberta provincial politics, during the 1930s, was slightly more welcoming of socialist-oriented organizations. The United Farmers of Alberta lost the provincial elections to the Social Credit party in 1935 due to the growing disillusionment with the United Farmers’ movement toward conservative policies including shortages in funding and relief to municipalities as well as an increase in the deportation of unemployed immigrants.123 The newly founded Social Credit party, led by William

Aberhart, appeared to Albertans as a radical break from the reactionary politics of the time.124 The election of the Social Credit party reflected a desire for an alternative to the increasingly reactionary policies of the current government, the United Farmers of

Alberta, but not necessarily for a conservative government. Alberta sought a radical political shift. Many leftist politicians supported the Social Credit and thrived in the

121 Drees, 3, 5.

122 Finkel.

123 Finkel, 20.

124 Finkel, 39.

62 changing political environment of the province. Social Credit, at this stage in its history, appeared to be more of a coalition government.

There were, however, two different types of people operating within the party in its early years. The first was the reform-minded people who remained anti-corporate and the second were the more “economy-minded,” pro-corporate business individuals, including Aberhart himself.125 From 1935 until 1940, during which the Indian

Association of Alberta was being formed, both groups of politicians dominated provincial politics through the Social Credit. This time period saw a wave of progressive legislation introduced into the province. Amongst other reforms, such legislation included the first male minimum wage in Canada, access to health care for people with tuberculosis and mothers in need, and pensions for all teachers.126 An interest in the public ownership of resource production was expressed. There were calls from the legislature asking the government to consider taking over “wholesale and retail distribution of petroleum products in the province and/or to undertake a thorough inquiry into the spread between the field price of crude oil and the wholesale and retail prices for refined petroleum products with a view to bringing about a reduction in the consumer price of the said products.”127

More attention was directed toward Indigenous communities during this time period than in previous governments. Six Métis colonies were established, along with

125 Finkel, 41.

126 Finkel, 43.

127 Finkel, 45.

63 education and health care, through the Métis Population Betterment Act of 1939.128 While there were little signs of increasing economic viability for the Métis, the Act indicates a willingness from the Aberhart government to consider Indigenous issues. There may have been a correlation between Aberhart’s interest in Indigenous issues when at the same time the Indian Association of Alberta was formed with the help of the influential Métis leader, Malcolm Norris.

Sympathy and consideration for leftist politics quickly declined during the inter- war years. The party itself became “increasingly conservative and closed to grassroots criticism,” causing the left-wing supporters to leave the party.129 After years of gaining prosperity through mineral development and agriculture and attempts to hold onto the profits, more and more, the Social Credit began to treat leftist organizations, such as the

Indian Association of Alberta, as their main opposition.130 The Co-operative

Commonwealth Federation was gaining support, causing the Social Credit to act more aggressively in opposition to socialism.131 The election of the Social Credit in 1944 indicated the shift away from a government which included various supporters of the left toward an entirely right wing, dominated government led by Ernest C. Manning.

Alberta experienced a political-economic transformation that had a profound impact on Indigenous political organizations in the province. Oil discoveries in Leduc in

1947 and the growing tensions of the Cold War led the province to accelerated economic

128 Finkel, 46.

129 Finkel, 71.

130 Drees, 6.

131 Finkel, 98.

64 prosperity while stifling socialist movements and oppositions.132 Alberta was beginning to experience a sustained economic boom and further political shifts to the right. During the post-war years, Indigenous peoples and their political organizations, particularly those individuals and organizations with socialist backgrounds, were entirely excluded from representation and decision-making in the economy. Due to this shift in provincial politics, the Indian Association of Alberta quickly lost any economic or political influence or power in the province just as it had begun.133 To assert a stronger presence in the Euro-Canadian mainstream society, they were going to need help from the non-

Indigenous community.

Two notable Euro-Canadian Albertans, John Laurie and Ruth Gorman, joined the

Indian Association of Alberta in the 1940s to assist in legal dealings and negotiate with the provincial and federal governments on Indigenous peoples’ behalf. Aside from an interest in Indigenous politics, Laurie and Gorman had little in common. They did not share a political ideology and both came from different backgrounds. While Laurie was a rural schoolteacher in the foothills of Alberta and had ties to the Co-operative

Commonwealth Federation, Gorman was a wealthy lawyer and heiress from Calgary who considered herself a conservative, populist, and defender of human rights.134 The political climate of the time suited both individuals, however. During the 1940s, mainstream

132 Finkel, 99.

133 Drees, 6.

134 Frits Pannekoek, “Introduction,” in Gorman, Ruth, Behind the Man: John Laurie, Ruth Gorman, and the Indian Vote in Canada (Calgary: U of C Press, 2007) xlii, xlvii.

65 politics of Alberta became more fiscally conservative while there remained a popular moral obligation of wealthy people toward charity for the poor.135

The two most influential non-Indigenous people involved with the Indian

Association of Alberta in the 1940s reflected the politics of the time. Laurie Drees explains that outside help reflected the general feelings of contemporary Canadians who believed poverty on the reserves could be resolved by integrating communities into liberal democratic principles held by non-Indigenous peoples of Canada. This occurred in hopes that the people living on reserves would begin to economically contribute to the Canadian market economy.136 Frits Pannekoek, a biographer of Ruth Gorman and John Laurie, disagrees with Drees and notes, “Gorman argued that Aboriginal people should be able to make his or her own choices and did not expect that would be assimilation.”137 While

Drees felt the motives behind non-Indigenous support were to further integrate and assimilate Indigenous peoples, Pannekoek believed their altruism was beneficial to the rights of Indigenous peoples. Pannekoek and Drees disagree as to the degree in which non-Indigenous influence affected Indigenous peoples and organizations. Pannekoek stated that Gorman and Laurie addressed the needs of Indigenous peoples in the province at the time while Drees implies that their assistance was motivated by a Eurocentric and paternalistic notion of what would be best for Native peoples and, evidently, assimilation was that notion. Regardless of Drees and Pannekoek’s opinions, liberal-minded, non-

Indigenous support and influence in the Indian Association of Alberta was significant and

135 Pannekoek, xiv.

136 Drees, 44, 45.

137 Pannekoek, xl.

66 pervasive until 1968 when Harold Cardinal was elected President. Drees and Pannekoek’s analyses reflect the complexities of the controversy surrounding the intentions of liberal non-Indigenous peoples involved in Indigenous political organizations; the analyses does not look at support or influence coming from other forms of non-Indigenous groups in other Native political organizations. For the purposes of this research, I would suggest that Gorman and Laurie’s involvement is significant because it played a major part in the radicalization of the Indian Association of Alberta.

Between World War 2 and the mid 1960s, Indigenous political organizations in

Canada were mostly stagnant.138 There were many reasons for this. Indian Act amendments prohibited political organization of Indigenous peoples from the 1920s until the 1960s. In many communities as well, disease and starvation hindered political cooperation.139 A notable, though not the only exception, is Taiaiake Alfred’s assertion that the Mohawk community at Kahnawake politically thrived during this time period because of their clear break with “Indian Act mentality” and “reliance on colonial institutions.”140

Further government inquiries established that Indigenous peoples on reserves were experiencing poverty due to the interventions of the state. The Hawthorn Report was released in 1967. It recommended that Indigenous peoples of Canada be considered

138 “Mostly” because there was a significant submission from the Indian Association of Alberta to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons on the Indian Act in 1947.

139 Miller, Lethal Legacy.

140 Bryan Palmer, “ ‘Indians of All Tribes’: The Birth of Red Power,” Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties, Toronto: U of T Press, 2012, 195. Quoted from Alfred, Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1995) 160-1.

67

‘citizens plus.’ The report brought considerable attention to the deplorable material conditions of Indigenous communities, particularly First Nations reserves, in Canada. The report revealed to mainstream Canada the realities of “Native poverty, substandard housing, marginalization in the wage-labour economy, ill-health, and a poorly functioning residential schools education system.”141 The report recognized that assimilation policies had not only failed but were, in fact, the cause of the material conditions being experienced by Indigenous peoples. It was also the first time a federal government document made mention and recognized the special status of Indigenous peoples in

Canada by using the term ‘citizen plus.’142

While the recommendations of the Hawthorn Report were non-binding, it is important to note two things in the findings. The first is that problems within the Indian

Act were recognized at the federal government level before 1968. The second is that while the federal government understood certain implications of the restrictions placed on the lives of Indigenous peoples through federal legislation, they sought to assimilate people into mainstream society through “economic betterment.” Efforts to bring people into the market economy rather than discuss the protection of Aboriginal and treaty rights were made, contradicting the primary message being sent from the Hawthorn Report.

“Citizens Plus” or The Red Paper

The tactics taken in 1968 by Indigenous peoples forced the government to listen to them. Leaders and political organizations were interested in treaty rights and self- determination. New leadership within Indigenous politics emerged to incite change.

141 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 390.

142 Palmer, ‘Indians of All Tribes,’ 199.

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Harold Cardinal, twenty-three years old, was elected President of the Indian Association of Alberta in 1968. His election became a major turning point for the organization, but also for Indigenous politics on a national scale. Harold Cardinal was raised on the Sucker

Creek reserve, located northeast of Edmonton. He attended high school in Edmonton and studied sociology in Ottawa. He was part of a new generation of Indigenous youth dedicated to their communities and Indigenous identities and educated in universities.

Cardinal was young, educated, and passionate about Indigenous rights and politics. The

Indian Association of Alberta’s membership doubled following his election.143 Cardinal was incredibly popular amongst Indigenous peoples in Alberta, but also known and respected at the national level. While Cardinal was notably more conservative than other

Native leaders of the time period, the moment was ripe for a change in leadership.144

Radicalism and organized resistance were already in place by the time the White Paper was released.145

Cardinal deeply mistrusted Euro-Canadian people attempting to influence

Indigenous political organizations. He suggested in an interview with Laurie Drees that the reason for the lack of interest and decline of participation of Indigenous communities within their own political organizations, prior to the late 1960s, was the increased level of involvement of non-Indigenous people within the organizations.146 Cardinal saw the support of people like Ruth Gorman and John Laurie as weakening Indigenous rights.

143 Drees, 162.

144 The American Indian Movement had reached full scale and the growing Native protests across North America were obvious. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 397, 399.

145 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 402.

146 Drees, 162.

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Indigenous peoples had lost interest in their own political organizations because the direction of the organizations reflected a non-Indigenous agenda not the true needs of

Indigenous communities. In Cardinal’s book, The Unjust Society, he wrote:

“Non-Indians have no business trying to organize the Indian people. Such

would-be helpers go into Indian communities with predetermined and,

inevitably, mistaken conclusions about problems and solutions. The

theories held by these amateur sociologists seldom are related to the

realities of Indian life and nearly always are irrelevant to the real

problems.”147

Cardinal acknowledged the good intentions of the liberal, non-Indigenous person who intervened on behalf of Indigenous peoples in the political affairs of Indigenous communities as well as acknowledged the fact that, “they really want to help.”148

However, he made clear that the efforts of these “do-gooders” only hurt and confuse the

Indigenous political movement rather than to assist them and create clarity in what needs to be done.149 Cardinal elaborates on the Native/newcomer relationship by stating that, since it is a lack of resources that keeps Indigenous political organizations from growing or having an influence in the relationships between the federal government of Canada, the provinces, and Indigenous communities, then the wealthier, non-Indigenous peoples that

147 Cardinal, 78

148 Cardinal, 76.

149 Cardinal, 76.

70 want to help could do so by sending money. Furthermore, money is needed that does not require answerability and whose parameters on usage have not been set by the gift-giver.

In other words, and as Cardinal states, “money without strings attached.”150

Cardinal saw that the actual needs of Indigenous communities are more often than not, different than the needs perceived by Euro-Canadians. The pressure coming from

Euro-Canadian society to uphold values that do not reflect Native communities has resulted in a lack of interest by Indigenous peoples in projects or participation in the political realm of Indigenous life. Cardinal notes that when non-Indigenous people set out community development projects for Indigenous communities, the projects predictably fail because of disinterest. He states that do-gooder agencies or organizations, “overlook the fact that it never was an Indian project and never could hold Indian attention; the

Indians are busy with their own plans for change.”151 This general attitude extended to his ideas about the operations of the Indian Association of Alberta. The direction Cardinal took the organization reflected his philosophies toward an Indigenous-led revitalization of politics in Canada.

The election of Harold Cardinal indicated a desire from the First Nations population in Alberta to find a leader willing to be more aggressive in protecting

Aboriginal and treaty rights. Cardinal was young, educated, Cree, and had connections to the bourgeoning American Indian Movement in the United States. Cardinal’s popularity, combined with the transformative shift of Indigenous politics throughout Canada and the

United States, reflected the resurgence of Indigenous-led politics. There were, however, important implications of the major shift in Indigenous politics in Canada during the late

150 Cardinal, 79.

151 Cardinal, 79.

71

1960s that would impact the political-economic development of Canada in the 1970s.

First off, treaty rights became the most important issue of the time and overshadowed any discussions of amendments to the Indian Act. The prioritization of the protection of treaty rights excluded two important groups from Indigenous politics: gender discrimination within the Indian Act and the interests and rights of non-status Indigenous peoples living in Canada.

The release of the White Paper in the spring of 1969 forced the relationship between Indigenous peoples in Canada and the federal government to resemble more of a nation-to-nation dialogue than previously undertaken by the two groups. This relationship would better suit the agenda of asserting Aboriginal and treaty rights rather than the federal government’s pursuit of assimilation. There is evidence that, prior to the political movement of the late 1960s, the relationship between Indigenous peoples with the Crown of England and the Dominion of Canada was paternalized and considered, to the Crown, to be more of a burden than a political relationship; the Crown not only saw Indigenous peoples as dependents of the state, but annoyed that they were. Dale Turner notes that in a previous Supreme Court ruling, the Court determined that “Aboriginal title was a

‘burden’ on Crown title, that Crown title was underlying and preceded the signing of treaties, and that Aboriginal title could be granted and taken away by the Crown.”152 This ruling was contradictory to how First Nations felt about the treaty relationships.

National consultations related to federal policy regarding Indigenous peoples were the initial point of contention between the Indian Association of Alberta and the federal

152 The Supreme Court made the judgment in the decision of St. Catherine’s Milling and Lumber Company v. The Queen, 1888. Dale Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe (Toronto: U of T Press, 2006) 19.

72 government. According to The Native People, an Indigenous news publication of the time period, the Indian Association of Alberta and the National Indian Brotherhood were the most active political organizations representing First Nations during the national consultation processes of proposed changes to the Indian Act in 1969.153 In Alberta, initially six representatives were elected by the Indian Association of Alberta to represent

Aboriginal interests of the province at the National Consultation meetings that would take place in March 1969. The National Consultation meetings were the federal government’s method of consulting with First Nations on the proposed changes to the Indian Act.

After the names of the delegates were sent to the Department of Indian Affairs, the Indian Association of Alberta received a letter from the department asking them to reduce the number of their delegates from six to four. Cardinal responded by stating that the six delegates represent the three regions of Alberta –south, central and north- all of which have varying issues and concerns pertaining to their communities; eliminating delegates would give a disproportional regional representation of First Nations interests in

Alberta at the National Consultation meetings.154 The three regions also represent Treaty

6, 7, and 8. The Department’s decision to only fund four delegates was the initial breakdown of the relationship between Cardinal and the Indian Association of Alberta and the federal government and, more specifically, the Department of Indian Affairs.

Cardinal and the Association decided to fund all six delegates’ visit to Ottawa on their own. Distrust of the consultation practices by Indigenous leaders developed before the consultations had begun.

153 “Treaties More Important”, in The Native People, 1 (11), May 1969.

154 The Native People, “Indian Act Consultations”, vol. 1, no. 8, page 1.

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Following the contentious consultation meetings, the federal government released the White Paper. The proposed policy plan was short: fourteen pages. However, if implemented, it would have a significant impact on Aboriginal and treaty rights. The main tenets of the policy statement included:

1. “That the legislative and constitutional bases of discrimination be removed;

2. That there be positive recognition by everyone of the unique contribution of

Indian culture to Canadian life;

3. That services come through the same channels and from the same government

agencies for all Canadians;

4. That those who are the furthest behind be helped most;

5. That lawful obligations be recognized;

6. That control of Indian lands be transferred to Indian people.

The Government would be prepared to take the following steps to create this framework:

1. Propose to Parliament that the Indian Act be repealed and take such legislative

steps as may be necessary to enable Indians to control Indian lands and to acquire

title to them.

2. Propose to the governments of the provinces that they take over the same

responsibility for Indians that they have for other citizens in their provinces. The

take-over would be accompanied by the transfer to the provinces of federal funds

normally provided for Indian programs, augmented as may be necessary.

3. Make substantial funds available for Indian economic development as an interim

measure.

4. Wind up that part of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

which deals with Indian Affairs. The residual responsibilities of the Federal

74

Government for programs in the field of Indian affairs would be transferred to

other appropriate federal departments.”155

The repeal of the Indian Act that was suggested in the White Paper would have the effect of eliminating status-Indians and enfranchising all First Nations peoples into

Canadian citizenship. The most offensive aspect of the proposed policy to Indigenous political organizations was that it undermined Indigenous communities’ interests in asserting their rights as sovereign nations. Bryan Palmer, when discussing the White

Paper, notes that, “Behind the façade of reform, some concluded, lay a fundamental continuity of state effort to deny Indigenous identity.”156 Apart from the aspect of legitimizing band councils that were governed by the Indian Act, resistance to the document was directed at the federal government’s attempt to absorb Indigenous economies, identities, and cultures into mainstream Canada.

Losing federally recognized Indian-status and becoming a Canadian citizen would take away the collective land rights that were previously promised to Indigenous leaders and communities. Theoretically, property taxes would be required of all those whose reserve lands were turned into private property. The problem with this suggestion was two-fold: that treaty promises ensured that First Nations peoples with official status would not be subject to the taxation of their own lands and that the concept of private property made it clear to those who lived in Indigenous communities that the federal

155 Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969, published under the authority of the Honourable Jean Chretien, PC, MP, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa, 1969, Queen’s Printer Cat. No. R32-2469. In Dale Turner, “Appendix” in This Is Not a Peace Pipe (Toronto: U of T Press, 2006) 127.

156 Palmer, 200.

75 government, because of their Eurocentric ideas of land use and individual property ownership, had no understanding as to the ways in which reservation land was used.157

The recommendation to phase out of the Department of Indian Affairs and gradually hand over responsibilities of Aboriginal services to the provinces over the following five years was another site of contention within the White Paper. The federal government was making attempts to alleviate themselves of the “burden” of Indigenous peoples thus breaking treaty negotiations that guaranteed the federal government would provide those essential services. The document proposed to set aside $50 million as an economic development package for Indigenous communities to “catch up.”158

Despite the distrust Cardinal developed toward the government during the initial consultation meetings, other Indigenous leaders across Canada were more hopeful that the federal government genuinely intended to include an Indigenous voice and perspective into a policy that might have the effect of changing the conditions for people living on reserves.159 The release of the White Paper, however, proved these hopes to be no more than an idealistic vision of the capabilities of the state. The government was not ready to include Indigenous perspectives into policy developments. The significance of the White

Paper was that it was a genuine effort of the government to address the issues of poverty on reserves, yet made no effort to meaningfully consult or effectively listen to the needs set forth by Indigenous leaders. Indigenous peoples were further enraged with the federal government.

157 Turner, 24.

158 “No Need to Fear Changes –Chretien,” The Native People, vol. 2 no. 5, October, 1969, p. 15

159 Turner, 19.

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Throughout the consultation proceedings that preceded the release of the White

Paper, leaders from the Indian Association of Alberta and the National Indian

Brotherhood as well as other provincial Indigenous political organizations made it clear that Aboriginal and treaty rights were of utmost importance to people with status and amendments to the Indian Act could only be discussed after those rights were guaranteed.160 However, the document stated, “that the legislative and constitutional bases of discrimination be removed; that services come through the same channels and from the same government agencies for all Canadians; that control of Indian lands be transferred to the Indian people.”161 The White Paper was another attempt at creating a policy that would integrate Indigenous peoples into the capitalist economy. Eradicating reserves through streamlining social service funding and imposing private property laws would alleviate the federal government from its responsibilities to First Nations and would, therefore, have the effects of violating all Aboriginal and treaty rights, the precise goals of Indigenous leaders. Not surprisingly, Indigenous leaders were furious. The government further betrayed the trust they had tried unsuccessfully to develop throughout the consultation period.

The backlash toward the policy paper was unprecedented. Throughout the country, Indigenous communities and their leaders were offended. In Alberta, there were serious discussions of violent uprisings while others urged more consultations and negotiations. Responding to the talks of violence, Chief Norman Yellowbird of Samson

Band in Hobbema stated, “Violence is not the answer. There is no need for violence if

160 The Native People, “Treaties Most Important,” vol. 1, no. 11, May 1969, page 1.

161 Turner, 20, Appendix 1.

77 there is room for negotiations. We can embarrass the government a lot more by defeating their new Indian policy.”162 This is exactly what the Indian Association of Alberta set out to do. In November 1969, the association held a two-day conference aimed at developing a counter policy to the White Paper. Yellowbird went on to say at this conference that,

“the Indian point of view was completely ignored.” While acknowledging the piece of the

White Paper that claims the intent of eliminating discrimination, Yellowbird told the press, “To me he (Chretien) is creating discrimination by telling white people that we have not been subject to taxation and that we should be.”163 Yellowbird’s comments reveal the sensitivity of the subject of taxation; taxing Indigenous peoples for the land they live on would break a treaty promise of the federal government. The issue of taxation and Indigenous rights would become an important point of contention for the Lubicon

Lake Cree Nation in their efforts to resolve their land claim.

The Indian Association of Alberta presented a unified counter policy titled

Citizens Plus and was popularly known as the Red Paper. The Red Paper, released in

June 1970, outlined Indigenous rights and the responsibilities of the Crown and federal government to continue the work of the promises made in the treaties. The opening quotation was taken from The Hawthorn Report in order to make clear the apprehension of Indigenous peoples about assimilating into mainstream Canada: “Indians should be regarded as ‘Citizens Plus’, in addition to the normal rights and duties of citizenship,

Indians possess certain additional rights as charter members of the Canadian

162 The Native People, “Indian Chiefs on the New Indian Policy,” vol 1, no 12, June 1969, p. 6.

163 The Native People, “xxx,” vol. 2, no. 6, Nov 1969, 1.

78 community.”164 A focus on the responsibilities of Indian Affairs, Aboriginal and treaty rights, and the Indian Act continued throughout the document. The term, “citizens plus” used in the report to describe Indigenous peoples in Canada was later used by the Indian

Association of Alberta to name their own document that disputed the assimilation qualities of the White Paper.

The Red Paper broke down the White Paper and explained why it is inappropriate and offensive to attempt to change particular aspects of the existing relationship between

First Nations and Canada. For example, the Red Paper discussed the White Paper’s attempt to hand down the responsibilities of education from the federal government to the provinces. The Red Paper insisted that the federal government continue to fund education because it is a treaty right that was paid for by the Indigenous peoples of Canada in surrendering their lands; education funding is not a form of welfare, it’s a form of payment.165 The statement went on to reflect Cardinal’s theories of the way funding should be allocated in order to fully respect a nation-to-nation relationship that was, from an Indigenous perspective, present in the spirit of the original treaties. The document asserted that the funds be allocated to band councils who will make the final decision as to whether local people would operate schools on the reserve or if contracts were to be designed to place students in other schools, so long as those schools offered an

Indigenous voice and an Indigenous vote. This section noted that Canadian children would also have the opportunity to attend schools on reserves.166

164 Indian Association of Alberta, Citizens Plus (Edmonton, 1970).

165 Indian Association of Alberta, 14.

166 Indian Association of Alberta, 14.

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The Indian Association of Alberta’s intentions were to hold the federal government accountable to their treaty commitments. They wanted to clarify the concerns of Indigenous peoples and show that the federal government held a distorted view of

Aboriginal and treaty rights. Other demands were made such as insisting that the Indian

Act be reviewed but not repealed and that the Department of Indian Affairs be transformed to reflect the needs of Indigenous peoples, particularly concerning treaty rights.167

The transformative aspect of the document, or so it seemed, was the attempt to gain self-determination and self-governance systems within Indigenous communities. The way in which the document reads suggests a nation-to-nation dialogue that represented the true intent of the original treaties. The Red Paper attempted to reinstate that dialogue and begin to address the unjust history and effects of these policies in North America. The

Red Paper was a significant turning point for the ongoing process of decolonization of

Indigenous communities in Canada.

Following the highly publicized event on Parliament Hill in June 1970 when

Cardinal and the Indian Association of Alberta presented the Red Paper to the government, Prime Minister Trudeau and Indian Affairs Minister Chretien immediately repealed the White Paper. The implications of the Red Paper and the efforts of Cardinal and the Indian Association of Alberta should not be underestimated. The importance of the events surrounding the opposition to the White Paper was that multiple unified

Indigenous political organizations with federal representation gained strength and recognition on the national political scene. The events following the release of the White

167 Indian Association of Alberta, 4, 10.

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Paper paved the way for the entrenchment of treaty rights for First Nations in Section

35(1) of the repatriated Constitution of 1982. According to Dale Turner, the movements made since the White Paper have led to contemporary discussions of Indigenous self- government.168 I would add that comprehensive and specific land claims have gained momentum and progress since the public discussion and recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights occurred in 1968. Policy development in Canada began to include an

Indigenous perspective.

The reaction to the White Paper from Indigenous leaders across the country, such as Harold Cardinal, politicized the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the federal government. The federal government was forced to have transparent and meaningful conversations with Indigenous political organizations rather than having closed discussions that pertained to Indigenous issues amongst themselves. The leaders of the Indigenous political movement in Canada during the sixties demanded acknowledgement of Aboriginal and treaty rights. While there have been countless instances of Indigenous resistance toward colonial activities since the first days of

European arrival in North America, this is the first time a nationally organized and unified, pan-Indigenous voice stood together in the pursuit of national recognition of

Aboriginal and treaty rights. Their intentions were to eradicate policies that discussed

Indigenous peoples as though they were a burden as well as policies that proposed assimilation into the Euro-Canadian mainstream society through coercive practices led by the state.

168 Turner, 18.

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Indigenous Intellectuals and Political Analysis

Another significant outcome of the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s was the development of a new group of Indigenous intellectuals. Cardinal’s book, The Unjust

Society, has become part of the canon in Indigenous political and intellectual writing that specifically targets Canada’s role in the circumstances of poverty amongst Indigenous communities. Howard Adams also became an important writer of the time period. In

Adams’ first book, Prison of Grass (1975), he critiques the common assumption that

Indigenous peoples in Canada will escape poverty by participating in a more meaningful way in the mainstream market capitalist economy. In other words, Adams was skeptical that by being included in the Euro-Canadian economy and governance systems, and for example playing a larger role within natural resource development and industrial production, they would be able to resolve problems of poverty in Indigenous communities. Adams wrote that “poverty is a symptom of the economic conditions in a capitalist society” and that “poverty is ultimately linked to colonial suppression.”169

Adams noted that economic indicators, such as employment rates, were symptoms of colonialism; the struggle to find “easy solutions to complex problems” will result in a cycle where people who were initially oppressed will find themselves in a position of power and use that power to become the oppressors.170

Adams was one of the first Indigenous intellectuals to assert the need to form a new system of governance that is grass roots and involves all Indigenous nations, not just people with status represented by band councils that are governed by the Indian Act. He

169 Howard Adams, Prison of Grass (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1989) 126.

170 Adams, 126, 139.

82 asserted that a new form of radical nationalism was required that would involve economic, social, cultural, and political autonomy over all Indigenous nations and begin with the takeover of First Nations reserves, Métis communities, and urban ghettos.171

Adams took an anti-capitalist approach when he began to define the meaning of contemporary decolonization projects. He argued that “self-determination for each community means working at the level where the community and the people actually exist so that the masses become involved in decision-making.”172 Adams proposed grassroots, community-based projects that asserted their own governance structures that supported the umbrella of pan-Indigenous political organization rather than communities gaining independence through participation and acceptance in the greater capitalist- economy structure.

Contemporary writers and intellectuals, such as Taiaiaike Alfred, Glen Sean

Coulthard, and Andrea Smith, have contributed to Adams’ work and included a traditionalist approach.173 A traditionalist approach encourages Indigenous peoples to return to their roots by revitalizing teachings, an approach that is utilized in present

Indigenous resistance movements. Coulthard notes that confrontation must occur on two fronts: addressing colonialism, including power structures and racism that suffocate and

171 Adams, 167.

172 Adams, 184.

173 Taiaiaike Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: an Indigenous Manifesto, (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2009). Taiaiaike Alfred, Wasase: indigenous pathways of action and freedom, (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2009) 133. Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). Smith, Andrea, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005).

83 stifle cultural distinctiveness; and confronting capitalism that continues the inequitable distribution of wealth, property, and financial structures that have continued the process of colonization.174 He says that, since 1969, there has been a movement away from coercive and violent forms of state control and land dispossession toward a “liberal recognition-based” form of politics that does little to resolve economic disparities and even perpetuates the colonial agenda.175 The traditionalist approach, as observed by

Alfred, Coulthard, and Smith, does not only include a process of cultural decolonization but economic decolonization as well.

The traditionalist approach and the effort of those who became proponents of

Indigenous-owned means of production as a means of escaping poverty have played a major factor in the political rift that developed in the mid 1970s on the eve of massive tar sand production. Proponents of cultural distinctiveness and advocates of Indigenous- owned means of production were critical in developing an “Aboriginal bourgeoisie”176 in

Alberta that was both fueled by the oil and gas industry and facilitated by the state. It is likely that the development of obvious disparities between communities following the mid-seventies was a consequence of the absence of an anti-capitalist critique of the oil and gas development that had been and continues to boom in the region. The sought after gain in cultural and political recognition, the subsequent rift in organized politics, and the

174 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 33, 34.

175 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 22, 23. Glen Sean Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007), 437.

176 Coulthard discusses this process in relation to the legal solidification of Indigenous property-ownership, Red Skin White Masks, 43.

84 consequences of the shift in Indigenous leadership frameworks are the focus of the following chapters.

While Cardinal and the Indian Association of Alberta may have influenced the important messages of Adams, Adams also became a critic of the development of the role

Cardinal played in Alberta politics in the mid seventies and the change of direction taken by the Indian Association of Alberta. As oil and gas boomed in northeastern Alberta and economic opportunities of Indigenous inclusion came to play in the region, the roles and methods of Indigenous leaders rapidly shifted to reflect the changing economy rather than developing Indigenous governance structures within their communities and supporting a wider agenda of pan-Indigenous resistance.

Despite the criticisms of Adams, the methods implemented by Cardinal and other pan-Indigenous political organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s influenced the future course of nation-to-nation dialogues in Canada. For the first time since the initial treaties, First Nations in Canada and their ongoing concerns related to Aboriginal and treaty rights came to the forefront of Canadian politics. Peter Kulchyski notes that, “For just over 100 years policies were developed at the whim of officials; after 1970

Aboriginal people became major players in policy development.”177 This became an important turning point for First Nations and Canadian governments.

177 Peter Kulchyski, “Forty Years in Indian Country,” Canadian Dimension 37 (Nov.-Dec. 2003) 33-4, in Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 195.

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Chapter 3: Discussions at the Table: Indigenous Leadership, Communities, and Alberta’s Oil and Gas Industry, 1976-1979

As Canada became a major oil-producing nation-state throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the natural landscape and communities of northeastern Alberta transformed. Harold Cardinal’s leadership and the efforts of the Indian Association of

Alberta in the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed to the overall strength of Indigenous politics that eventually opened the way for the development of moderate politics in the

1970s. Throughout the decade, opportunities for business in the oil and gas sector as well as increasing class stratification amongst Indigenous communities developed with the co- optation of organized politics.178 Indigenous politics in Alberta throughout the 1970s and early 1980s went through a tumultuous time as band-leaders and political organizations began to work with government and industry for the purposes of continuing northern energy megaprojects, particularly tar sand developments. Following Cardinal’s resignation from the Indian Association of Alberta in1975, new leadership in the association worked toward forming business agreements with oil companies and various levels of government. Indigenous leaders shifted their politics in order to gain a meaningful increase in participation in the booming oil and gas industry.

Indigenous communities in northeastern Alberta experienced wide-ranging consequences of the shifting political actions and the disintegration of pan-Indigenous political organizations in the 1970s. Inequitable economic and environmental impacts of the oil and gas industrialization of the region were the most obvious changes to the region. As community agreements were made individually with oil and gas companies, existing political organizations, including the Indian Association of Alberta and the

178 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 410.

86

Isolated Communities Advisory Board, became ineffective as the organizations lost lobbying and representational power. The geographical and environmental locations of communities in the northeastern region of the province began to significantly influence the level of involvement and associated benefits of industrial tripartite agreements.

Communities with oil and gas wells directly on the reserves or nearby were prioritized by the oil and gas industry and the provincial government, whereas communities which were not located in direct development areas, but near enough to experience the environmental change occurring due to increasing development, were neglected. Geographically isolated communities, while gaining no economic benefits from industry, experienced environmental damage from being located downstream or near oil and gas development.

The following chapter shows how inequality developed in the 1970s and early

1980s. It is organized in three sections. The first section reveals the initial fractures within

Indigenous politics in northeastern Alberta by telling the story of the relationship between two important Indigenous leaders, Harold Cardinal and Joe Dion. Both leaders were influential in the political organizations of the province and worked toward the same goals of asserting Aboriginal and treaty rights. The division within the political movement began, however, with their opposition to one another’s approach to attaining those goals. The story of Cardinal and Dion reflects a greater problem that has developed within Indigenous leadership and politics in Canada that followed the general success of political activism in the late sixties.

The second section addresses the effects of the changing politics of the time on individual communities in the region. The increased industrial presence of large oil and gas consortiums including Esso Canada Ltd. and Syncrude had various impacts on reserve communities including Kehewin and Frog Lake within the Cold Lake region of

87

Alberta as well as communities located further north such as Fort Chipewyan and Fort

McKay. Industrial development also had impacts on isolated communities that were politically and economically excluded from development, including Lubicon Lake.

Industry and government neglected to address the environmental impacts of industrial change as a region and instead focused on individual communities. Indigenous political organizations tended to do the same.

The primary research for the first two sections of the chapter relies heavily on the magazine publication, The Native People. The newspaper began as a publication of the

Alberta Native Communications Society and was chaired by James Ducharme of the

Métis Association of Alberta. Harold Cardinal was an initial staff member, although he left after becoming President of the Indian Association of Alberta. The importance of The

Native People lies in its initial purpose that coincided with that of the association: to inform Indigenous peoples in Alberta about politics and events that are relevant to their interests and well-being, particularly, but not limited to, the reserve. Métis communities and the urban Native population were included in the general readership priorities.

It is no coincidence that the publication’s first issue was released in July 1968, at the height of Indigenous political organization in Alberta, and continued until 1984. The magazine follows the actions and statements of Indigenous leaders in the province in regards to Aboriginal and treaty rights and how they relate to the new developments of the tar sand industry in Alberta. The newspaper began and ended at a pinnacle time for

Indigenous politics in Canada. Important debates developed about Indigenous leadership and resource development as well as broader colonial issues related to the Indian Act. The publication provides excellent insight into the specific events and reactions of Indigenous peoples in Alberta at such an important time for Indigenous politics.

88

The third section explores the critiques made by Indigenous intellectuals who discuss the changing politics of Indigenous governments, leadership, and organizations in

Canada. Howard Adams, Taiaiake Alfred, and Glen Sean Coulthard reappear as three influential writers that discuss various perceptions and realities of asserting self- government systems within Indigenous communities in Canada. Their work is widely read and particularly relevant to the themes and controversies that have risen in northeastern Alberta since the late 1960s. I would suggest that the changes of the leadership as well as the omission of the anti-capitalist critique made by Adams played a significant role in the development of tri-partite agreements between Indigenous communities, the provincial and federal governments, and the oil and gas industry. Alfred and Coulthard go further to explore the possibilities of Indigenous governance structures and recognition in Canada; however, Alfred tends to downplay the anti-capitalist critique while Coulthard makes it explicit.

Political Fractures Within Pan-Indigenous Organizations

Immediately following his re-election to a seventh term as President of the Indian

Association of Alberta in 1974, Harold Cardinal posed for a photo with the President of

Syncrude during the opening for the Alberta Native Development Corporation

(ANDCO).179 A new era was developing in Alberta that would see the rise of the tar sand industry transform into the industrial project of global economic importance that it has become today. The era represented a shift in the relationship between government, industry, and Native political organizations; as opposed to traditionally seeing one

179 “Looking Back at ’74,” The Native People 8, 1 (January 3, 1975), 1.

89 another as the antithesis of each other’s goals, they came to see each other as potential business partners.

Rumours developed throughout Indigenous communities in Alberta in the mid

1970s that the Department of Indian Affairs was seeking a Native person to become the

Department’s Regional Director. Joe Dion, the charismatic and popular Cree chief of

Kehewin, told the press that the Department approached him for the position. He declined because he felt he could make a bigger difference as chief rather than becoming the regional director. The position, according to Dion, did not carry enough authority to become effective.180

Harold Cardinal announced to the Edmonton Journal that he had accepted the position of Regional Director of Alberta within the Department of Indian Affairs in

February 1977.181 The news was met with harsh criticism. Cardinal’s biggest critic was

Dion. Chief Joe Dion told The Native People, “I do not feel the position should be held by the president of an Indian organization that believes in not giving in to the government. I really believe that he has insulted the Indian people and the organization that was proud of the Indian people in this province.”182

Reports surfaced in The Native People that many First Nations people believed that Cardinal was guilty of “selling out the Indian cause” by going to work for the

Department of Indian Affairs and representing the federal government, the institution that

180 “Leaders offered top Indian Affairs job,” The Native People 9, 32 (August 27, 1976), 1.

181 Angela Mah, “Cardinal to be head of Indian Affairs in Alberta,” The Native People 5, 12 (February 18, 1976), 1.

182 Mah, 1.

90 developed assimilative and integrative policies that the organization had been adamantly opposed to.183 Yet as he explained in his book, The Rebirth of Canada’s Indian

Movement, Cardinal believed that it was necessary for communication to improve between Indigenous peoples and the federal government.184 It was the political strategies that were changing, not the goals. Cardinal still appeared to be dedicated to preserving treaty rights and working toward creating and improving a nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government. This relationship would achieve self-determination for

Indigenous peoples; however, he was about to attempt to change the system from within, a divergence from the mistrustful politics he attributed to his opposition toward the White

Paper.

Cardinal wrote that book before taking the position with the Department of Indian

Affairs. Critics cited contradiction between Cardinal’s actions and his words in the book.

According to James Frideres, Cardinal changed his position from The Unjust Society to include, “traditional Indian religious values and philosophies.”185 Cardinal had changed his perspective on the role of Indigenous political organizations. Initially he asserted that, in the past, Indigenous political organizations had been structured in a conflict-oriented manner, reflecting white organizations that do not reflect Indigenous values or perspectives; he acknowledged that these reasons were the basis of the organizations’ failures. Cardinal urged Indigenous peoples to continue fighting for their rights or they

183 Mah, 1.

184 James S. Frideres, “Book Review: The rebirth of Canada’s Indians, by Harold Cardinal,” The Native People 11, 6 (February 10, 1978), 7.

185 Frideres, 7.

91 will lose more in the end if they don’t.186 Cardinal suggested that Indigenous politics take a more co-operative stance to reflect the traditions of the elders, yet he continued to assert

Aboriginal and treaty rights. Co-operation, from Cardinal’s perspective, meant recognizing the legitimacy of the Department of Indian Affairs. The Department, with the support of the Indian Act, delegitimized the power of traditional governance structures and undermined attempts toward Indigenous self-governance. Cardinal’s cooperation confused critics like Frideres and other Indigenous leaders in that he suggested co- operation with government while continuing the struggle for Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Aboriginal and treaty rights support the concept of self-governance systems, not the legitimacy of the Department of Indian Affairs as the overseer of Aboriginal affairs.

Perhaps this two-pronged approach is more clearly stated amongst contemporary

Indigenous intellectuals, such as Taiaiake Alfred, who maintain that the path to decolonization is in the re-assertion of traditional Indigenous teachings and knowledge.187

It is possible that this was the intent of Cardinal’s words; however, it was his decision to accept the job with the Department of Indian Affairs that left critics and other Native leaders feeling perplexed. The confusion lay in Cardinal’s shift from a consistent opposition to the government toward an abrupt change in occupations where he represented the department he had previously adamantly opposed.

Cardinal was not the only leader changing political positions in the province. In

July 1977, Chief Joe Dion of Kehewin was elected President of the Indian Association of

186 Frideres, 7.

187 Alfred, Peace, Power, and Righteousness.

92

Alberta.188 Dion won by a landslide against his opponent, Don Cardinal, the brother of

Harold Cardinal, indicating that the support of First Nations in the province lay behind

Dion, the most outspoken critic of Harold Cardinal. A rift had developed in Indigenous politics that in time would become more ideological.

Harold Cardinal only worked a few months as the regional director of the

Department of Indian Affairs. He made controversial decisions to audit many band councils he suspected of misusing federal funding and subsequently became unpopular to many First Nations in Alberta. In one case, he investigated the Kehewin band council’s management of funds during the time in which Joe Dion was chief.189 Dion, by no surprise, became publicly angry at Cardinal’s actions as regional director. Now, as the

President of the Indian Association of Alberta, Dion argued that Cardinal had lacked

“democracy and consultation with the Indians” during his position as regional director, exactly what Cardinal was a proponent for during his time as President of the Indian

Association of Alberta.190 In November, the Association demanded the removal of Harold

Cardinal from his position as regional director.191 Indian Affairs Minister, James Hugh

Faulkner, agreed and fired Cardinal.192 In the end, Cardinal’s actions to audit band councils and Dion’s anger toward Cardinal created larger tensions amongst Indigenous

188 “Dion captures top IAA position,” The Native People, 11, 30 (July 28, 1977), 1.

189 Martin Thompson, “Dion Justifies Loan From DIA,” The Native People, 11, 2 (January 13, 1976), 1.

190 Martin Thompson, “The Unjust Society,” The Native People, 11, 2 (January 13, 1978), 4.

191 “IAA publicly demanded removal of Cardinal,” The Native People, 10, 44 (November 25, 1977), 1.

192 “Cardinal Axed By Faulkner,” The Native People, 10, 44 (November 25, 1977), 1.

93 political groups at a time when, with the massive tar sand development of the north about to begin, political organizations needed strong leaders.

Political organizations in Alberta were being affected by the political and ideological tensions developing between the Indigenous leaders of the province and the provincial and federal governments. The Isolated Communities Advisory Board was a regional pan-Indigenous political organization that developed in the late 1960s. The board developed as a means of representing northern Indigenous communities in Alberta which were geographically isolated from mainstream Canadian society but were being adversely affected by industrial development, particularly oil and gas. Indigenous leaders of five northern First Nations communities created the advisory board in 1968 to politically represent those communities that were located in the north-central region of Alberta. The communities were isolated from mainstream Alberta society yet accessible, and increasingly so, by oil and gas industrial developments.193 Little Buffalo and Cadotte

Lake, the communities predominantly inhabited by the Lubicon Lake Nation, joined the

Isolated Communities Advisory Board in 1974. The advisory board consisted of representatives from seven communities including Trout Lake, Peerless Lake, Chipewyan

Lake, Sandy Lake, Loon Lake, Cadotte Lake, and Little Buffalo.

The communities’ geographic isolation from northern resource development projects also created a labour problem for Indigenous communities. William Beaver, the

Isolated Communities Advisory Board representative for Trout Lake, indicated that the basic problems experienced by isolated communities were a lack of skilled or semi- skilled labourers as well as an absence of training courses for light or heavy equipment

193 L. Roy, “Problems still exist for isolated communities,” The Native People, 8, 9 (February 28, 1975), 2.

94 operators, welders, or other trade-related positions necessary for the industry.194 The newer technology of the seventies necessitated high-skilled labour in the resource sector.

This development ensured that northern isolated Indigenous communities would be unable to supply employable people. Instead, those communities would only be able to provide a low-skilled labour force and therefore, a low-waged labour force; high-waged jobs went to settlers from the south. Beaver noted that the education systems of the northern isolated regions were inadequate in providing the training needed for employment in resource development.195 The existing inequalities of the class structure in the northern parts of the province between Indigenous and settler communities were magnified by the role that skilled labour played in the booming oil and gas industry.

Apart from the problems caused by the nature of labour in northern resource industries, changes to the natural landscape created other challenges for isolated

Indigenous communities. The existing means of social and economic livelihood at the time period were seriously affected by the development of oil and gas. The construction of roads, facilities, and the “onslaught of civilization” directly targeted the eight communities as they lay in the path of the development of the Athabasca Tar Sands in the northeast.196 Trapping continued to be a way of life and a significant means of subsistence in the existing hybrid economies of Indigenous communities in north-central Alberta.

Traplines had historically been affected by the timber industry, yet the isolated communities were often seasonally employed and involved in the timber industry.

194 Roy, 2.

195 Roy, 2.

196 L. Traverse, “Isolated communities seek answers,” in The Native People, 9, 20 (June 11, 1976), 2.

95

However, the oil boom of the seventies saw many traplines completely taken over by oil and gas companies who attained leases from the province.197 An influx of roads into the region for oil sands exploration brought more transient people to the region when the communities were already experiencing problems with the presence of road crews and alcohol that came to the settlements.198 There seemed to be little control in what the isolated communities could do in order to mitigate the effects of resource exploration.

The necessity for skilled labour, combined with environmental degradation, combined with the growing presence of workers from the south meant that the communities needed to gain political control of their territory. Land claims, as a means of gaining political control over traditional territories, were becoming more important to the communities than ever before.

The settlement of land claims has been a crucial part of Indigenous politics since the signing of treaties and, more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, a critical component of Indigenous politics throughout the 1970s. Land claim settlements were perceived as a means of community control over their own resources whether that occurred through co-management boards with the state, some form of community-based resource management, or the ultimate goal of self-governance. Either way, Indigenous communities were supposed to be consulted prior to development.199

197 Traverse, “Seek answers,” 2.

198 L. Traverse, “Isolated Communities Work for a Better Way of Life,” The Native People, 8, 9 (February 28, 1975), 3.

199 Recent Supreme Court Rulings also require the provinces and industry to not only consult but also obtain consent and accommodate for First Nations with unceded and disputed traditional territories.

96

During the 1970s, the presence of unmitigated resource developments by the province grew in the north-central region of Alberta. Indigenous communities and political organizations brought land claim negotiations to the provincial and federal courts in efforts to gain control of the land. A major goal of the Isolated Communities Advisory

Board was to acquire their own land in the northeastern Alberta region so that communities could begin their own businesses. Before retiring in August 1977, Beaver noted that:

“The Natives in these isolated communities desire to start small

enterprises. Since it’s slowly being opened by oil and lumber companies

to do this, we need finances which we do not have. Since we have no

legal claim on the land we have settled, we cannot use it as a collateral

to borrow money. We are totally dependent on the government.”200

The Isolated Communities Advisory Board created a unified voice for multiple communities facing similar challenges due to their geographic location. Specific communities, however, held separate attitudes toward oil and gas development because of their own particular circumstances. Different colonial histories combined with strong leadership led the Lubicon Lake Nation, located in Cadotte Lake and Little Buffalo, to address land claim issues separately while still participating in the advisory board during the 1970s. As previously noted, isolation from mainstream, European society allowed for a vibrant hunting and trapping economy to continue in the Lubicon territory up until the

200 L. Roy, “Isolated Communities Eager for Settlement,” The Native People, 10, 23 (July 1, 1977), 1.

97 late 1970s. This situation did not occur in communities that lay on historical transportation routes such as Fort Chipewyan or Fort MacKay. While this situation allowed for traditions and language to continue with minimal colonial interference, it also created a circumstance where massive development had a larger impact in a shorter period of time; a smooth adaptation to the destruction of the northern Alberta bush was impossible for the Lubicon.

Membership in the Isolated Communities Advisory Board and the engagement of legal representation were the first steps taken by the community, made up of both people with status and without, toward redressing the destruction caused by resource development. In 1975, Chief Walter Whitehead of Lubicon Lake joined the six other chiefs of the communities involved in the advisory board and filed a caveat that asked for formal public recognition that there existed seven Indian bands north of Lesser Slave

Lake that have laid claim to 33,000 square kilometers “by virtue of un-extinguished aboriginal rights.”201 In other words, the communities wanted recognition that the land they lived on, the land currently under mass development, had never been previously ceded through treaty negotiations.

After leaving the Department of Indian Affairs, Harold Cardinal turned toward the business of consulting. Through this, he came to work for the Isolated Communities

Advisory Board in their pending land claims cases. In May 1977, while the caveats were still pending, the Alberta Provincial Government passed Bill 29 that changed the wording in the Alberta Land Act so that any caveat relating to unpatented Crown Land would be

201 Goddard, 49.

98 dismissed and the bill would be applied retroactively.202 During the time that the caveats were being filed, a similar but separate case went to the Supreme Court. In that case,

Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories lost their case; however, the judge recommended that similar cases in Alberta be ruled in favour of the Indigenous claims being made.203 When the caveat filed by the advisory board reconvened in court, the provincial judge ruled against the caveat as well as all others that had been filed despite the Supreme Court of Canada’s recommendation that the caveat be accepted. The bill that was tabled in April 1977, when applied retroactively, made Whitehead and Cardinal’s caveat null.

The provincial government’s program, Preventative Social Services, cut all funding to the Isolated Communities Advisory Board in May of the following year.204

Program representatives stated that the organization was not using their funds properly because the money was going to land claims rather than social services; the provincial service provider did not see the two as connected.205 Following the costly and time- consuming court case in addition to the loss of provincial funding, the organization struggled to continue operations.

At the same time the province was cutting the funding to the Isolated

Communities Advisory Board, the Indian Association of Alberta also discontinued their support for the Advisory Board. The reasons remain unclear. The change of leadership

202 Goddard, 51, 52.

203 Goddard, 51.

204 Martin Thompson, “ICAB Hurt by Funding Withdrawal,” The Native People, 11, 20 (May 19, 1978), 1.

205 Thompson, 1.

99 may have been a factor. The organization specifically represented people with official status. Peoples’ various statuses, whether they had official status, Métis, or no status, meant that the Indian Association of Alberta could not represent them. Lubicon Lake was not an official reserve as recognized through the Indian Act.206 All information about land claims cases that the association had obtained were turned over to Harold Cardinal as the chief land claims negotiator. The priorities of the Lubicon Lake Band and other isolated communities were to receive an equitable land claim settlement. Bernard Ominayak, the traditional chief of the band, stated that, “the treaty people in the area need the land as much as people need food. No reserve means no funds and no funds means poverty and poverty means more poverty. The band desires little of the latter.”207

Without the funding from the province, the Isolated Communities Advisory Board was unable to continue their land claims case.208 Without the support of the Indian

Association of Alberta and the Métis Association of Alberta, the advisory board did not hold much political leverage or representation. Harold Cardinal, since leaving the

Department of Indian Affairs, remained the primary negotiator for the communities in regards to land claims, but without state funding and support from the Indian Association, the organization could not continue Cardinal’s work. Collective political action of the isolated communities had ended. At this time, the Indian Association of Alberta had also begun to change their direction of the organization toward a more business-oriented position with the oil and gas industry. The new position further divided the organization

206 Clifford Gladue, “ICAB speaks out,” The Native People, 11, 20 (May 19, 1978), 6.

207 Martin Thompson, “Possible Rift in ICAB,” The Native People, 11, 18 (May 5, 1978).

208 Martin Thompson, “ICAB hurt by funding withdrawal,” The Native People, vol. 11 no. 20, p. 1.

100 as the organization became absorbed into industry politics. Due to the distancing of itself from regional political organizations, combined with the fractures of inside politics because of its orientation toward the oil and gas industry, the political influence of the

Indian Association of Alberta began to decline.

Oil & Gas Industry Moves Into The Communities

Indigenous politics changed in northeastern Alberta as many leaders of political organizations looked toward oil and gas development as a viable means of economic growth for their communities. While treaty rights and land claims were still considered important to the Indian Association of Alberta, local Indigenous participation in tar sands projects was increasingly being acknowledged as a necessary part of the economic future for First Nations communities. During the mid 1970s, two major oil sand projects began in the region: Syncrude Canada Limited near the Fort McMurray area and Esso Resources

Limited in the Cold Lake region. Syncrude was located along the Athabasca River, close to the Cree communities of Fort Chipewyan and Fort McKay. Esso located their projects near the communities of Kehewin and Frog Lake in the north-central-eastern region of the province, approximately three hours northeast of Edmonton and near the Saskatchewan border. Indigenous political organizations, specifically local band councils and the Indian

Association of Alberta, were determined to have those communities included in the development of those projects.

The first tripartite agreement between First Nations, the federal and provincial government, and industry in Alberta was signed in 1977. On July 3, the Indian

Association of Alberta, the federal Department of Indian Affairs, the Province of Alberta,

101 and Syncrude signed the Indian Employment Opportunities Agreement.209 The agreement outlined the rights and responsibilities of all parties involved. Syncrude was required to hire qualified Indigenous peoples with status and provide necessary on-the-job training as well as offer cross-cultural courses for non-Indigenous supervisors. The Department of

Indian Affairs agreed to provide funding that would provide the necessary industry qualifications training to First Nations communities. The Indian Association of Alberta agreed to increase involvement in First Nations communities by encouraging people to access qualifications training and ensuring that communities are aware of job postings.

Part of this agreement was the creation between all parties of the Indian Oil Sands

Economic Development Corporation. The federal government agreed to fund the organization over the next five years to assist Indigenous-owned businesses in seeking opportunities in Fort McMurray related to tar sand development. Syncrude agreed to release information to the Corporation about Syncrude’s future needs in terms of goods and services so that local Indigenous businesses would be able to bid on contracts with

Syncrude.

Agreements made with individual Indigenous communities and industry became common during the years of the oil and gas boom. While the agreements were made between the communities and the oil and gas companies, both the Indian Association of

Alberta and the provincial and federal governments were involved. A high profile example was the contentious agreement made in 1979 between Esso Resources Ltd. with seven different First Nations communities all residing in the Cold Lake region of the north-central-eastern part of the province.

209 “Native Involvement at Syncrude,” The Native People, 10, 20 (July 3, 1977), 14.

102

Esso intended to develop tar sands plants in the north-central-eastern part of the province that is mostly populated with Indigenous communities. When the proposed project came about, hearings were initially held with the Energy Resources Conservation

Board, the independent, quasi-judicial, regulatory board for oil and gas development in

Alberta. An organization began of the Tribal Chiefs Association that consisted of chiefs from the seven communities that would be affected by the Cold Lake project: Saddle

Lake, Kehewin, Frog Lake, Whitefish Lake, Heart Lake, Cold Lake, and Beaver Lake.

The organization expressed general enthusiasm toward the project, so long as Native participation in the economic development of the region remained a central tenet of the contracts with Esso. The Tribal Chiefs Association’s position statement read, “We believe a new era in corporate Indian relations is possible with this project.”210 In August 1978, they presented to the Energy Resources Conservation Board reports indicating the various facilities, services, and labour availability of the affected communities. The Department of Indian Affairs and Esso Resources Ltd. jointly funded the research used for the presentation.211

The Energy Resources Conservation Board hearings became a political platform to relay the intentions of various leaders, organizations, and communities that felt strongly or were personally affected by the project. The Indian Association of Alberta submitted concerns that were related to the training and education of Indigenous peoples in the region in order to gain equitable employment and have actual positive effects on

210 L. Bruneau, “Tribal Chiefs Association Gives Conditional Support to Cold Lake Development,” The Native People, 12, 6 (February 9, 1979), 1.

211 Bruneau, 1.

103 the local economies.212 Joe Dion, still the President of the Indian Association of Alberta, made an impassioned speech in relation to government commitments in the provisions of training for the project. Dion asked why, during the Second World War, the government could train soldiers in the art of killing people so quickly and was still not able to train people in a time of peace for the industrial projects of the north.213 Dion’s strong words indicated a focus on the industrial and governmental assistance of training Indigenous peoples to participate in the mega-resource projects of the northern regions of Alberta.

Opposition to tar sand development was conditional depending on the level of involvement of Indigenous communities in the region. Within a small part of a decade, the major Indigenous political organizations of the region had shifted from an agenda of land claims and treaty rights toward goals of employment and participation within regional industrial development projects.

Kehewin representatives, including the former chief Joe Dion, were present at the

Energy Resources Conservation Board hearings as well. The band reiterated the sentiments of Dion, noting the high levels of unemployment in the community and their insistence that, should there be a Cold Lake tar sand development project, the industry should use the existing reserve services and commercial ventures.214 Support for the project was not the issue. The issue for Esso, the government, and the Energy Resources

212 L. Bruneau, “IAA Submits Conditions to ERCB,” The Native People, 12, 6 (February 12, 1979), 3.

213 Bruneau, 3.

214 L. Bruneau, “Kehewin speaks at ERCB,” The Native People, 12, 6 (February 12, 1979), 5.

104

Conservation Board was whether or not the participation of local Indigenous communities would be enough to satisfy the political climate of the time.

Following the Syncrude contract, it was clear to First Nations that these types of agreements would not produce an equitable outcome for their people. Syncrude’s official opening occurred on September 15, 1978. One year after Syncrude had been in operation, the company reported that less than 10% of employees were Indigenous.215 Out of a regional labour force of 5000 Indigenous peoples with treaty status, Syncrude employed only 50-60.216 Syncrude’s Native Programs and Community Development Coordinator told The Native People that the low level of Native employment was due to the high turnover rate caused by seasonal hunting periods and family problems.217 An important element included in the equality agreements was that Syncrude would agree to provide cultural sensitivity training for its supervisors. Syncrude failed to meet the anticipated employment standards and the Indigenous proponents of the Cold Lake project were determined not to make similar mistakes. They wanted a contract that assured certain employment standards. The earlier labour surveys that were developed for the Energy

Resources Conservation Board indicated that 70% of the employable Indigenous population of the region were unemployed; half of those people were under the age of twenty-five.218 The Tribal Chiefs Association demanded a written social and economic

215 Lincolne Bruneau, “Less than ten percent Natives at Syncrude,” The Native People, 12, 39 (September 29, 1979), 1.

216 Lincolne Bruneau, “DIA mad at Esso,” The Native People, 12, 23 (June 8, 1979), 1. . 217 Bruneau, “DIA mad at Esso,” 1.

218 Martin Thompson, “Indians seek contract with Esso,” The Native People, 12, 8 (February 23, 1978), 1.

105 contract with Esso that would guarantee the access to jobs, training, and business opportunities that had been promised.219 These demands regarding employment and training along with media publicity surrounding the Energy Resources Conservation

Board hearings led to increased Indigenous participation in the industry.

An emphasis on the environment developed through the Esso proceedings and the politics surrounding the Cold Lake tar sand developments. While economic and social advancement had always been a primary concern for the project agreement, increased community participation in the hearings brought environmental concerns to the forefront.

As it became known that the technology of tar sand development required massive amounts of water to produce the bitumen, Marcel Piche, a representative of the Cold Lake

Band, requested that environmental safeguards, such as monitoring bodies, be put in place to protect the water, and that no water be taken from the two lakes on the band’s territory.220 The inclusion of environmental concerns, or even some sort of public acknowledgement of environmental effects of these projects, was a significant shift in project hearings. Yet what distressed the Department of Indian Affairs in the socio- economic impact study, which was conducted by Esso Resources Canada, was the section where Esso addressed the environmental concerns presented by the Cold Lake Band. Esso said that if the Band did not like the proposal for the project, they should consider relocating to an isolated community.221 While environmental concerns were coming to the table, the reaction from industry was weak. The comment made by Esso regarding the

219 Thompson, 1.

220 Thompson, “Indians seek contract,” 1.

221 Lincolne Bruneau, “DIA mad At Esso,” The Native People, 12, 23 (June 8, 1979), 1.

106

Cold Lake Band’s concerns indicates a general disregard for adverse environmental effects experienced by isolated communities.

Another development in these hearings was the public recognition of Indigenous women’s participation in the labour force. Women were initially represented in discussions regarding their interests for equitable employment opportunities in the development of Esso’s Cold Lake project. Representatives stated that Indigenous women were already working on the Syncrude project as warehouse personnel, teamsters, and labourers as well as in traditional women’s positions such as secretaries, cooks, and waitresses.222 One barrier to women’s employment in this region was a lack of access to daycare facilities; they requested that Esso fund child-care services for all employees.223

Women further sought public acknowledgement of the inequities previously existing in the tripartite agreements. The inclusion of the environment and a stronger role for women in the tripartite agreements was a clear progression from the previous Syncrude agreement.

Joe Dion announced, in May 1980, that he would not seek re-election as President of the Indian Association of Alberta in order to pursue a career in the private sector.224 He believed that there was a need for Indigenous businessmen in the oil and gas industry while Alberta experienced the current economic boom. Dion accepted a position as vice- president of the Red Air Enterprises Limited, based out of Bonneyville, Alberta, where he

222 Lincolne Bruneau, “Women Want Equal Employment Opportunities At Esso Plant,” The Native People, 12, 6 (February 9, 1979), 1.

223 Bruneau, “Women Want Employment,” 1.

224 “IAA President Quits,” The Native People, vol. 13 no. 20, May 16, 1980, 12.

107 was already a shareholder and director.225 Red Air was committed to working with

Indigenous peoples and providing assistance to them in joining the mainstream workforce. The company focused on general contract work and specialized maintenance work in tar sand development.

When asked about his decision, Dion stated that, “we can stand on the podium and call for equal opportunity until we’re blue in the face but it won’t come about unless we go out there and get it.”226 He felt that the only way to truly increase First Nations participation and to meaningfully change the economic conditions on reserves was to directly participate in the labour force and change the industry to include Indigenous peoples. While he still felt the role of President for the association was important and demanding, he felt he could “serve the Indian people in a greater way in his new role.”227

The President of the Indian Association of Alberta no longer felt that the best way to improve conditions on reserves was through political power but to have a greater amount of participation in the oil and gas industry.

The motivation to increase Indigenous participation in the oil and gas industry was not primarily attributed to Dion but reflected a general attitude amongst many Indigenous communities and political organizations at this time. In 1981 seventeen oil and gas producing reserves in Alberta met and decided to create an energy cartel.228 The cartel would follow in the steps of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes that was comprised

225 “IAA President Quits,” 12.

226 “IAA President Quits,” 12.

227 “IAA President Quits,” 12.

228 Martin Thompson, “Native Leaders Form Oil Cartel,” The Native People, 14, 13 (January 16, 1981), 1.

108 of twenty-eight tribes in the United States.229 An energy cartel organization in the early eighties was a drastic divergence from the sixties when the Indian Association of Alberta better mirrored the radical, militant principles of the American Indian Movement. The

Alberta version of a Native energy cartel “would analyze existing oil and gas agreements, review leases and provide Indian bands with the expertise to maximize benefits from the sale of natural resources.”230 While an oil cartel never came to fruition, the idea and meetings that took place laid the way for other Native-run oil and gas organizations that continue to operate in the region. These organizations were specifically designed to support those Indigenous communities who had resources located on their traditional territories. The development of community-based attitudes toward land-use and resource development opposed to national movements that had a treaty rights focus had further implications on Indigenous communities in the province, including the isolated communities.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, trappers in isolated areas near oil and gas development began to report on environmental destruction of the bush in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some trappers, many of whom base their entire income off the trapping industry, explained that in some areas, fur bearing animals have had to move out of the region due to the effects of heavy machinery and seismic drilling on the land as well as chemical pollutants that have been released into the air.231 Those affected trappers sought government assistance to compensate for their lost income due to the demise of the

229 Thompson, “Oil Cartel,” 1.

230 Thompson, “Oil Cartel,” 1.

231 Ben Buffalo Rider, “Trappers Set Bait For Ministers,” The Native People, 13, 20 (March 14, 1980), 1.

109 animals. In May 1980, five dead, oil-coated beavers were found by a trapper near one of

Esso’s plants in the Cold Lake region.232 Esso gave the trapper five hundred dollars for the loss of five pelts and said it would never happen again.233 One year later, the same trapper found two more oil-covered beavers in nearly the same spot related to a spill from a pilot project Esso had recently begun.234

The trapper’s story of receiving the money from Esso for the loss of the beaver pelts indicated a general transformation of the northern bush economy in the 1970s.

While many individuals and communities began to seek out equity agreements with industry, other individuals and communities sought reparations for the destruction of their local subsistence economies. The changing relationship between the trappers, beaver, and industry illustrates the impacts of the changing politics of the region on individual people; while some individuals were gaining employment others were experiencing a transformation of their way of life. By 1981, many trappers from the region had been in ongoing, extensive consultations with Esso Resources and the province for over three years. The energy board often ignored trappers’ environmental concerns; approval of projects was granted so long as there was some compensation to the trappers.235 The inequities that existed between Indigenous communities in the region were increasing and industry played a major role.

232 Willie J. Anderson, “Beaver Deaths Blamed on Oil Spills,” The Native People, 13, 21 (May 20, 1980), 5.

233 Willie J. Anderson, “Esso Compensates Native Trapper,” The Native People, 13, 22 (May 30, 1980), 11.

234 Lincolne Bruneau, “Oil-slicked Beavers Found At Project,” The Native People, 14, 22 (May 29, 1981), 14.

235 Martin Thompson, “Cold Lake Trappers on Hold,” The Native People, 14, 4 (January 23, 1981), 11.

110

There are two points to make in understanding the developments related to trapping. One is that, in most isolated communities at this time period, trapping remained a crucial means of income. At that time, for many people, it was their sole means of income whereas for others it was, and still is, a supplementary but still necessary source.

The beaver, a symbol of the fur trade and a changing economy of the North, now represented further shifting values of the land as they lay soaked in oil on the doorstep of the traplines. Oil and gas development and its adverse changes to the natural landscape were becoming a reality; the effects of this change on hunters and trappers were in contrast to the growing ideals of employment and socio-economic advancement in the region. Those with the ability to gain employment and business opportunities from oil and gas development would potentially benefit economically, but those who relied on hunting and trapping were more vulnerable to increased poverty. The competition between those who could gain and those who could lose became an important point to consider for the affected Indigenous communities.

The second point about hunting and trapping economies is the role of industry and government when it comes to the environmental impacts of development. Those who benefit the most from resource development would be industry, followed by the provincial and federal governments who gain royalties from industry, then whatever the economic benefits a local community could acquire if development were to occur in their region. The stakeholder benefitting the least is the community experiencing adverse environmental effects yet gaining no monetary compensation or employment in the industry.

Environmental restrictions and monitoring are the other aspects to consider. There were two major problems concerning environmental restrictions and monitoring. The first

111 problem, and the basis of the thesis, is related to the previous point about inequitable economic outcomes for individual communities; the only communities who were able to request regulatory measures were those communities directly involved in negotiations with industry and government. Isolated communities situated downstream from development or having roads built through them were not involved in negotiations therefore not included in having a voice in industrial regulation.

Another problem concerning the environment was that industry and government, according to journalists from The Native People, often did not adhere to the terms of negotiations related to environmental regulations. Oil spills continued to occur in the

Cold Lake region, despite Esso’s assurances that they would not. Syncrude has had countless problems over the years regarding contamination of the Athabasca River. Oil and gas companies might agree to environmental restrictions, but these agreements do not always ensure the safety and protection of the natural landscape.

Political Analyses and Critiques

Howard Adams, an intellectual who developed his ideas out of the radical movements of the sixties and early seventies, argues that government support of pan-

Indigenous political organizations only began in the sixties when the anger of the organizations threatened the overall administration of Indian Affairs. The “red awakening” of the sixties caused the government to financially support Native organizations that “posed a potential threat to their administration.”236 It was established in Chapter 2 that the organizations were well underway prior to the late 1960s but were

236 Adams, 156, 157.

112 not influential and were mostly dominated by the goals of non-Indigenous people. The influence and Indigenous-led character of organizations in the sixties was cause for the government to seek Indigenous leadership who would work for the goals of the state.

Adams states that the goal of the state was to co-opt Indigenous leaders into the middle class through generous grants.237 He noted:

“[The] real function of collaborator leaders is to prevent any mass radical

movement from developing and to check social action that would emphasize

or threaten the government; because they operate mostly in white society,

their impact is almost entirely limited to that area.”238

Adams criticized Indigenous leaders’ movement in Alberta as part of “red capitalism” because the organizations transformed into a branch of the government’s bureaucracy; the movement in Alberta failed, according to Adams, because it is exclusive by nature and included so few Indigenous peoples such as the Métis and those without status.239

These outcomes are widely accepted as a result of Indigenous leadership operating through Indian Act structures, such as the band council, but other writers on the subject of

Indigenous politics downplay the class analysis that is explicit with Adams. Located just outside of Montreal, Kahnawake is a Mohawk community that Taiaiake Alfred uses to show a region’s efforts to undergo “the transformation of the band council from an Indian

237 Adams, 157.

238 Adams, 159.

239 Adams, 179.

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Act agency into an institution of self-government.”240 Alfred notes that the transformation was meant to resemble the community’s own set of values, principles, and structures from the Mohawk tradition. The interesting and relevant aspect of the political development of

Kahnawake throughout the twentieth century to the circumstances of Indigenous politics in Alberta is the development of a regional political organization in the region of

Kahnawake for the purposes of settling a land claim. Alfred notes that the Mohawk nation unified itself rather than remaining divided into isolated communities that had been organized based on Indian Act policy.241

This form of regional unification amongst Indigenous nations in Alberta was present prior to oil and gas development of northeastern Alberta. As the communities began to represent themselves, however, divisions became more apparent. The outcomes of the divisive political organization that developed throughout the seventies had varying impacts for each community. Some communities benefitted financially while others experienced serious environmental consequences without any monetary compensation.

Those communities that benefitted financially did not escape environmental consequences of oil and gas development, but the income disparity between communities in the region grew.

Adams, along with other writers like Coulthard, have indicated the necessity for an anti-capitalist critique within Indigenous leadership frameworks; they have asserted that there must be a confrontation on two fronts: capitalism and colonialism.242 In

240 Gerald R. Alfred, Heeding the Voices of our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1995), 129.

241 Alfred, Heeding the Voices, 136.

242 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 33, 34.

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Alfred’s manifesto, Peace, Power, and Righteousness, he made the assertion that it is not enough for Indigenous peoples to control existing power structures, but to form societies based on cultural institutions, otherwise, “self-government becomes a Trojan horse for capitalism, consumerism, and selfish individualism.”243 Alfred’s manifesto was intended as a framework for present and future Indigenous leaders. The problems that Indigenous leaders of the past encountered included their inability to incorporate the political structures of Indigenous societies of the past. Alfred stated that a “traditionalist approach” would be most beneficial to Native leadership.244 Due to the loss and displacement of community traditions because of the damage two hundred years of settler-colonialism has inflicted, Indigenous peoples have been living in confusion, division, and despair. Alfred made consistent references to the loss of a cultural way of life as the reason for the collective and individual suffering of Indigenous peoples. The manifesto stated that,

“material poverty and social dysfunction are merely the visible surface of a deep pool of internal suffering.”245 The alienation of people from their past and their landscape has caused internal strife in all communities, particularly those communities that disagree between traditional leadership and Indian Act legitimated band councils. Alfred stated that, “the human capacity to achieve harmony is best developed through pacification and persuasion.”246

243 Taiaiaike Alfred, Peace, Power, and Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2008) 3.

244 Alfred, Peace, Power, and Righteousness, 5.

245 Alfred, Peace, Power, and Righteousness, 12.

246 Alfred, Peace, Power, and Righteousness, 17.

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The main tool of colonialism, and perhaps most effective, has been to separate humans from the natural landscape as well as from cultural institutions that do not support a capitalist agenda. As noted by theorists Adams, Alfred, and Coulthard, along with historians Fumoleau, Waldram, and Goddard, it is the alienation of people from the land and their community’s traditions that have been the primary cause of material poverty and social dysfunction. The capitalist nature of oil and gas industries operating in Alberta and the pursuit of profit resulted in the beavers coated in oil, employers disregard for cultural sensitivity training, and the exclusion of women from workplaces. The capitalist intentions of Syncrude and Esso, as well as the provincial and federal government’s support of their operations, have been fundamental in addressing problems of Indigenous communities as well as all other communities in Canada. Coulthard has since brought out the importance of an anti-capitalist critique in order to understand the human disconnection from the environment. “Primitive accumulation,” being the “historical process of the violent transformation of noncapitalist forms of life into capitalist ones,” has played a key role in the process of colonization.247

Consultations in the 1970s regarding changes of the natural landscape of the

Northwest marked a new era in the ongoing relationship between Indigenous peoples and the colonial governments of Canada. Following the movement of radical Indigenous politics in the 1960s, it was clear that consultation would be necessary. In order to move forward in their political and economic goals of developing tar sands in northeastern

Alberta, the oil and gas industries as well as the provincial and federal governments required consultation with Indigenous communities in the region. While the seventies

247 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 7, 8.

116 embarked on a new era of discussions at the negotiating table, it was the sixties and the efforts toward attaining a “politics of recognition” that transformed the more coercive and violent forms of social and economic control into a “psycho-affective” and internal means of control.248 An Indigenous recognition and role within the production of the tar sands allowed tar sand developers and governments to affectively maintain a process of dispossessing Indigenous peoples from the land.

Partially due to an increased capacity of political power for Indigenous political organizations and partially due to a desire for expediency from Esso and Syncrude as well as the provincial and federal governments, agreements were made between Indigenous communities, industry, and governments. The agreements mostly outlined the general economic, social, and environmental responsibilities that industry and government had with Indigenous communities represented by the Indian Act. These responsibilities included employment and training of local Indigenous peoples, use of local Indigenous businesses and some environmental regulations and monitoring for affected communities.

Inequitable economic and environmental effects began to develop for various communities in northeastern Alberta. A loss of a unified pan-Indigenous movement that had been loyal to land claims and treaty rights was redirected to individual community participation in industry.

In the 1970s, Indigenous communities had varying attitudes toward new tar sand projects, particularly the Syncrude project in the Athabasca tar sands and Esso Resources

Ltd.’s project in the Cold Lake region. Communities that were geographically positioned as important locations for oil and gas development, such as Kehewin and Frog Lake in north-central-eastern Alberta, were brought into negotiations and included in

248 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 22.

117 compensation and employment arrangements. Environmental monitoring and regulations also became an important tenet in the official agreements. Geographically isolated communities, communities that were further into the interior of Alberta and distanced from urban centres and major transportation routes, were excluded and dismissed from negotiations between government and industry. The ongoing and highly publicized battle of the Lubicon Lake Nation to gain control and greater access to their traditional territory began within these exclusionary practices by industry and state, but was also influenced by the changes occurring within Indigenous political organizations during the 1970s.

Individual community agreements that were made with industry not only had the effect of creating inequities between those northern communities who were able to participate and those who could not, but also delegitimized the existence of pan-

Indigenous regional political organizations that sought political representation within the province, such as the Isolated Communities Advisory Board. Communities acted on their own and gained power individually therefore weakening the power of regional representational organizations. There was no need for industry to negotiate with political organizations if communities had the authority and were willing to negotiate for themselves.

Another basic problem that these agreements have had, historically, is that the oil and gas industry have often failed to keep their part of the bargain. These failures occurred with Syncrude and Esso regarding Native employment numbers and the oil- slicked beavers. When Syncrude was confronted with the low levels of Indigenous employment, they responded by stating that it was the Indigenous lifestyle of seasonal employment and family problems that kept the numbers low rather than industry workplace change. When Esso was confronted with oil-spills in the bush, they responded

118 with a one-time compensation payment rather than modifying its activities to avoid future spills. The government did nothing to improve regulations and monitoring.

This chapter has examined the transitioning of the radical pan-Indigenous politics that characterized the late sixties and early seventies toward the drastic changes that communities and established political organizations undertook when they entered into business negotiations with the oil and gas industry and the provincial government of

Alberta. Opposition toward federal government policies aimed at absorbing Indigenous peoples into the mainstream Canadian economic and social structures that took place in the late sixties and early seventies, such as the White Paper, was a drastic change from the agendas set out in the mid seventies toward inclusion within the booming oil and gas industries of northern Alberta. The absence of an anti-capitalist agenda amongst

Indigenous leaders allowed for the shift to almost organically develop from the ranks of

Indigenous leadership of the sixties. Coulthard notes that the “strategies that have sought independence via capitalist economic development have already facilitated the creation of an emergent bourgeoisie whose thirst for profit has come to outweigh their ancestral obligations to the land and others.”249 The political shift in the seventies away from

Aboriginal and treaty rights toward business-oriented goals has had inequitable results for the various communities in the region of northeastern Alberta as well as severe impacts on the natural landscape through the process of industrialization.

249 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 42. In his article, “Subjects of Empire,” Coulthard explicitly acknowledges the process in which the politics of recognition begin to reproduce the power structures they initially sought to rise above, 437, 439.

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Chapter 4: Lubicon Lake Nation, 1979-1984

The outstanding land claim of the Lubicon Lake Nation in northeastern Alberta reflects the history of the federal and provincial governments’ political and economic intentions for the region. The Lubicon communities were excluded from the signing of

Treaty 8 in 1899. At the time, the exclusion had little impact on the community other than having access to reserve land. They hunted, fished, trapped, and spoke Cree up until the

1970s. During the seventies, however, massive oil and gas development in northern

Alberta began to encroach on traditional Lubicon territory. In response to the development, the Lubicon filed a specific land claim. An historical legal battle ensued.

Efforts were unsuccessfully made to settle the land claim and eventually their energies turned toward methods of direct action. The battle continues today as the Lubicon Lake

Nation remains without a settled land claim.

This chapter discusses the historical and ongoing results of the exclusion of the

Lubicon Lake Cree from Treaty 8 while emphasizing the significance of geographic factors. Isolation from Euro-Canadian settlers and resource development kept the Lubicon distant from industrial activities as well as wage labour, which had little impact on the material reality of the Lubicon peoples until the oil boom of the 1970s in northeastern

Alberta. The efforts of the Lubicon Lake Cree in the 1970s to address the ongoing destruction of the bush were circumvented by the Indian Association of Alberta. The political efforts of Indigenous organizations and many Indigenous political leaders shifted toward oil and gas trilateral agreements and business interests rather than land claim settlements. The second half of the chapter examines the legal barriers that the Lubicon faced in their efforts to resolve the land claim. Legal barriers were strategically designed

120 by the provincial government and the oil and gas industry to stall the land claim process and were ultimately successful in scuttling the Lubicon’s case.

The Lubicon have failed to resolve their land claim through the judicial system at a time when other Indigenous communities in Canada were having unprecedented success in land claims. The oil and gas industry has since been a significant part of the Canadian economy and therefore a major political force. The Lubicon Lake Nation has remained without a land claim while the oil and gas industry have continued development in

Lubicon traditional territory. The problems experienced by the Lubicon Lake Nation with their land claim have been widely divergent from the movement toward Indigenous land claim settlements elsewhere in Canada during the time period. There was an ever- increasing enthusiasm toward oil and gas development with a general disregard for

Indigenous politics unless those communities have been able to serve government and industry interests. The geographic importance of a region combined with the uniqueness of the resource played a critical role in the development of Indigenous politics as organizations and leadership splintered. The Lubicon were directly affected by these circumstances and played a major part in the diversification of Indigenous politics in the province.

Exclusion From Treaty 8

Indigenous communities in northern Alberta were affected differently by the signing of Treaty 8 in 1899 based on the communities’ geographic location and the resource development plans of the colonial government.250 When Cree leaders of northern

250 Fumoleau; Waldram.

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Alberta signed Treaty 8, the Cree people near Lubicon Lake had no representation. That summer, treaty commissioners began visiting important trading posts in the Lesser Slave

Lake region and along the Peace and Athabasca Rivers, inviting the leaders of the

Aboriginal communities in the region to sign the treaty. The boundaries of Treaty 8 were based on water transport routes that had earlier been mapped out by gold prospectors or political borders that were defined by Treaty 6.251 Lubicon Lake, however, was located in the interior of the province, away from major water transportation routes. Isolation from the major waterways of north-central-eastern Alberta determined the fate of the people of

Lubicon Lake. Unlike other Treaty 8 communities situated along the Athabasca River, including Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan, or Treaty 6 signatories, Kehewin and Frog

Lake, that were nearer to urban and political centres, the Lubicon were left out of major development agreements between the Government of Canada and the local inhabitants of the region.

Locations for treaty signing were economic choices. The major waterways of the fur trade, thus the treaty negotiations, were along the Athabasca River at Fort Chipewyan and Fort McKay, and on Slave Lake at Fort Vermillion. The Cree communities living near Lubicon Lake were overlooked at the signings of Treaty 8. Aside from some basic systems of bartering of fur hides for ammunition, tea, flour and other goods, the Lubicon peoples initially had little involvement with the fur trade.252 Due to the strategic locations of the communities on the major waterways, the colonial government and fur trading companies had long standing relationships with the people living there. The isolation of

251 Fumoleau, 53, 68.

252 Goddard, 12.

122 the Lubicon from early colonial settlement and their exclusion from Treaty negotiations allowed the Lubicon to pursue a generally uninterrupted subsistence hunting and trapping economy, with only a small portion of their economy depending on the fur trade. Despite the benefits of being able to maintain separate language, governance structures, and economic systems due to their exclusion, being left out of Treaty 8 built the foundation for the Lubicon’s contemporary legal struggles over treaty interpretations and resource and land rights.

The federal government recognized the Lubicon Lake Nation as a distinct group of people in 1939. Prior to this, the government assumed that most of the people living in the Little Buffalo Lake and Cadotte region were members of the Whitefish Lake and

Bigstone Indian bands.253 Previously, the judgment of the federal government was that the people living in the Little Buffalo Lake region were signatories of Treaty 8 because they were descendents of Whitefish Lake and Bigstone who were included in the signing. The federal and provincial governments agreed in 1939 to set aside twenty-five square miles to be surveyed for a reserve, which would include mineral rights. The reserve was never surveyed, however, due to the distraction of the Second World War and the subsequent administrative delays. Canada ignored the Alberta government’s reminders over the next decade to cede the land as a reserve for the Lubicon.254 The land was of little significance to the government at the time because of its distance and lack of resource importance. The isolated, mostly muskeg-ridden land was of little economic value to either the Province of

253 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, Connelly, R.M., Director, Specific Claims Branch, Office of Native Claims, Ottawa, Letter from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to Moira Hutchinson, Associate Researcher, Taskforce on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility, letter dated March 21, 1984.

254 Connelly’s letter to Hutchinson.

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Alberta or Canada, and often went overlooked. A reserve never became a reality for the

Lubicon Lake Nation. The material consequences of not having a defined reserve, however, did not become a major concern for the community until the 1970s with the sudden rise of oil and gas development and the subsequent industrial destruction of the bush.

Hunting, trapping, and fishing were basic components of the Lubicon way of life until their traditional territory was virtually destroyed by logging and oil and gas exploration.255 The oil boom of northern Alberta had begun and was in full swing by

1978. The landscape of northeastern Alberta had transformed into a space of intensive industrial development. All-weather roads were built into the region from Peace River to

Little Buffalo.256 The influx of southern workers and mass exploration as well as infrastructure development caused massive forest fires and led to the destruction of trapping equipment and the looting of traps.257 Industrial fires caused by the oil and gas industry raged through the forests while roads carved up the boreal landscape. A wildlife specialist from the University of Alberta completed a study that showed that the average family in the region made $5000 from trapping during the winter of 1979-80. That income fell to $4000 the following year, to $3,200 the next, then $800, $400, then almost nothing.258

255 Goddard, 6.

256 Goddard, 47.

257 Various observations were made by Lubicon trappers that noted the oil workers’ behaviour “almost like a competition.” Goddard, 74.

258 Goddard, 77.

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The hybrid economy developed by the Lubicon was reduced to a subsistence economy in a region where intensive development was rapidly changing the landscape.

Some Indigenous communities in the province were able to participate in the burgeoning industry, but many, more isolated communities did not have oil and gas directly on their territories. Lubicon Lake Nation had no official reserve and therefore limited bargaining power for the land. The destruction of the Lubicon territory was due to road building, exploration, and bush fires. The sudden collapse of the bush economy left most families turning toward welfare, pushing residents and community leaders of the region to politicize and seek collective action against oil and gas development.

The Lubicon Lake Nation continued with their efforts toward a land claim settlement despite a lack of political representation following the demise of the Isolated

Communities’ Advisory Board. Lubicon Lake’s chief, Bernard Ominayak, and the community’s lawyer, Fred Lennarson, became crucial characters in the following years of court cases and the eventual course toward direct action. Following the court ruling that threw out their land claim in 1978 because of Bill 29 and the subsequent disintegration of the Advisory Board, the provincial government offered a land tenure program to the residents of Cadotte Lake and Little Buffalo in attempts to resolve the frustrations of the community. Lennarson told The Native People in July 1981 that by accepting the

Province’s land tenure policy, the community could run the risk of turning into a hamlet and jeopardizing their efforts to gain reserve status.259 Accepting the program would make property taxable which would not exist if they had full reserve status. The provincial government went beyond the band council and approached individual families

259 Thompson, Martin, “Hamlet fears,” The Native People, 14, 28 (July 11, 1981), 1.

125 in efforts to sign agreements that gave people private ownership of their land. Some families signed the agreements. After Ominayak and Lennarson explained to community members that by signing the land tenure program they could jeopardize the land claim, many families quickly revoked their agreements.260

The status of the land of the Lubicon reflected a greater problem of changing political economies for northern communities. If the land was privatized and not part of the reserve, residents would be required to pay property taxes. Lennarson believed that, due to the Lubicon people’s level of dependency on the hunting, trapping, and fishing economy, members of the band would eventually be evicted from their homes because they would be unable to pay taxes.261 The bush economies of the isolated communities had never fully transitioned to a market capitalist economy and remained as hybrid subsistence and market economies, relying little on the market and much on the bush.

Few, if any, Indigenous communities of the subarctic were entirely subsistence economies since the advent of the fur trade monopoly began with the Hudson Bay

Company in1670. Most traditional economies were a mix of subsistence activities supporting local Indigenous families and commercial activities that supported the fur trade.262 While some communities were more active and profitable in the fur trade than others, nearly all economies of the North were intertwined in some way with the mercantile system.

260 Thompson, Hamlet, 2.

261 Thompson, Hamlet, 2.

262 Frank Tough, ‘As Their Natural Resources Fail’: Native Peoples and the Economic History of Northern Manitoba, 1870-1930 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996), 14.

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Northern communities on the periphery of industrial capitalism were affected by trends and changes in the global political system, yet their own subsistence needs remained highly dependent on the features of the natural landscape. The natural landscape of the region was crucial to the survival of the community; however, it is important to note that, “the bush – the land – sustained and reproduced the labour needed by the fur trade.”263 The land remained vital, even while the global political economy transitioned from furs toward industrial economies. Decision-making powers over natural resources were being sought through land claim settlements, but it was costly. Chief Ominayak expressed his frustration as he commented, “there was an easy way to stop them but they have all the money and we don’t.”264 The “easy way” was the legal way, but this would prove to be more difficult than anticipated.

Legal Barriers for the Lubicon

Ominayak and Lennarson’s fears of property tax enforcement became a reality two years later in 1983 when the Province of Alberta delivered property tax notices to community members in the Little Buffalo Lake area.265 The tax notices, all of which are currently kept on file at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary, advised the residents to pay property taxes on disputed traditional territory. The Government of Alberta was officially acknowledging its position that the residents of the Lubicon Lake region had no official

263 Tough, 41.

264 Thompson, Hamlet, 2.

265 arrears issued to some residents five months later in March 1984; Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, Memo found from Terri Kelly to Lennarson on June 18, 1984. Tax notices issued on Nov. 15, 1983.

127 reserve and the residents therefore had to pay taxes to the province. The pending land claims case was being ignored. The notices were sent on November 15, 1983. The notices of arrears were later sent to the residents who refused to pay these taxes on March 2,

1984.266 Lennarson noted that the province placed people in an impossible position of

“either paying and jeopardizing their aboriginal land rights, or not paying and facing the prospect of having the Provincial Government seize their scarce assets.”267 The residents who received tax notices and those who also received arrears were faced with decisions that would not only have a significant impact over their individual and familial livelihoods, but also have serious consequences in the community’s efforts in moving toward a just land claim settlement.

The Indian Act and subsequent arguments over status have been a divisive factor for the Lubicon. Apart from forcing the community into dependency on wage labour in order to pay the taxes, property tax notices and arrears in the midst of land claim negotiations exacerbated these already existing divisions for the Lubicon Lake Cree

Nation. Discrepancies over Aboriginal and treaty rights had divided Lubicon communities between status, non-status, and Métis peoples. As the divisions in the region amongst the residents grew over status, the tensions and frustrations of the land claim situation heightened as well. The community had exhausted all methods of state institutional conflict resolution in efforts to seek a just land claim settlement and to maintain some semblance of a bush economy.

266 memo from Terri Kelly.

267 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, memo from Fred Lennarson to the Mimir Corporation. July 25, 1984.

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James O’Reilly was hired to represent the Lubicon in the land claims case in

1980.268 O’Reilly had become a high profile Indigenous rights lawyer after representing the James Bay Cree in the landmark signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec

Agreement.269 It was O’Reilly who, in February 1982, filed for an injunction with the

Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench against “the work of ten major oil companies and the

Alberta government in Lubicon territory until the land was settled.”270 Following the disintegration of efforts in the courts made by the Isolated Communities Advisory Board and while the property tax notices and arrears were being sent to community members,

Chief Ominayak, Lennarson, and O’Reilly, filed for an interlocutory injunction to stop industrial development in the region while the community’s land claims were under review in the courts. An interlocutory injunction is a court order to stop resource development until a decision has been made about a pending legal decision pertaining to that particular tract of land. In this case, the injunction would be placed on development until the comprehensive land claims case was resolved, one way or another. O’Reilly was confident that some sort of “injunctive relief” would be given to the people of Lubicon

Lake.

The Province of Alberta and the oil and gas industry tried to stop the application from being submitted. They objected to the application on the grounds that the process of hearing the application, regardless of the outcome, would be too time consuming.271 The

268 Goddard, 101.

269 Goddard, 101, 102.

270 Goddard, 103.

271 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, Comments on the Application for Interim Injunction and the Judgments of November 17, 1983.

129 objection was sustained and the court decided to allow the application to be considered.

Immediately following this judgment, the Province of Alberta and the oil and gas companies filed several more objections on procedural and technical points.

The second set of objections made by the provincial government and the oil and gas companies operating in the region tied up the application until the drilling season had come and gone. The freeze-up time period in this region begins in early November. Oil and gas exploration and drilling are at their height until the following Spring when the ground thaws again and the muskeg and boggy marshes take over. The second set of objections was eventually dismissed on March 2, 1983, even though the arguments for the objections had concluded December 1, 1982. The Province of Alberta and the oil and gas companies had successfully tied up the application from being heard for an entire exploration and drilling season. Throughout this time period, the region saw a substantial loss in animals while the provincial government continued to sell mineral rights on the land that was in dispute. That same tract of land had been promised to the Lubicon as a reserve by the federal government in 1940.272

The application for the interlocutory injunction made by the Lubicon was finally heard by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench on September 26, 1983 and finished on

October 25, 1983 –one full year after the application had been submitted. The judgment was not revealed until November 17, 1983. The judgment dismissed the entire application to stop drilling and exploration on a number of different grounds. Two of the points made in the judgment document are:

272 Comments on the Application.

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6.) while a loss of a way of life can be compensated in money

damages, loss of oil company profit cannot. Thus the Indians will not

suffer irreparable harm if no injunction is granted, but the oil companies

would suffer irreparable harm i[f] an Interim Injunction were granted.

7.) The Indians, being poor and thus unable to provide a financial

undertaking to the oil companies for damages, are not entitled to an

injunction.273

Affidavits were submitted to the courts from Chief Ominayak, community elders, professors from the Anthropology department of the University of Calgary, as well as environmental scientists from the University of Alberta to support the claim that destruction of the region endangers the way of life for the Lubicon Lake Nation.274 This day, November 17, 1983, marks the turning point in the Lubicon Lake Nation’s tactics of using the judicial system and litigation proceedings as methods of saving their traditional territory from oil and gas development and, thus, attempting to resolve the historical conflict between the government and the community.

The final judgment rendered by the courts in the case of the Lubicon Lake Cree

Nation states that because of the economic disadvantage of the Indigenous peoples, an injunction would be impossible because if they lose the land claim case and are then sued by the oil and gas companies for legal damages and profits lost during the interim period of the injunction, they will not able to compensate the oil and gas companies. The courts

273 Comments on the Application.

274 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, Letter from Lennarson, November 24, 1983.

131 clearly sided with the oil and gas companies and their profit margins. Poor people, therefore, are not able to access the legal system in case they are not able to compensate multi-national oil corporations in the event that the court sides with the company rather than the local resident. A way of life has been compared to the profits of oil and gas companies and only one, the company profits, could, in the legal system’s perspective, suffer irreparable harm if lost. The legal system, designed by the state, was there to protect the profits of the oil and gas sector, not rural Indigenous communities. While Cole

Harris may have been correct in saying that the unequal distribution of land in mid- nineteenth century British Columbia was not an issue of class, but of race and culture, this was certainly not the case in Alberta by the early 1980s. The Lubicon made no more attempts to resolve the land-use problem by use of the judicial system.

The Lubicon, at this point, were out of money. Ottawa denied a request from the community for financial support to pursue the litigation cases. At the same time, the

Department of Indian Affairs cut the Lubicon’s annual operating budget in half, from

$101, 736 to $51, 460.275 Funds needed to continue the pursuit of land claim negotiations and the injunctive relief were either donated individually by band members, concerned citizens, the legal team, or Ominayak himself, or else loaned to them from the James Bay

Cree. To reiterate, at this time period, the Lubicon Lake community was predominantly a hunting, trapping, and fishing community whose traditional territory was under immediate destruction. There were little means of monetary gains through a market capitalist economy that could cover legal costs as well as the costs necessary to travel to

Edmonton for court proceedings. Despite O’Reilly’s optimism toward winning the

275 Goddard, 103.

132 injunction on development, the reality of the situation was that the Lubicon were spending money in a system they neither ascribed to nor truly understood at this time.

Without support from the federal government, the Lubicon people were placed in a situation of spending money that nobody had.

Hope, however, came to the community when the federal government appeared to begin efforts of support for the Lubicon’s plight. John Munro, Indian Affairs and

Northern Development Minster, urged Milt Pahl, the Minister Responsible for Native

Affairs in Alberta, at the start of 1984, to grant the Lubicon the reserve that was promised to them in 1940.276 This was the second time in four months that Munro had encouraged the Province to deal with the Lubicon situation in a way that was fair to the people of

Lubicon Lake.277

It appeared to the Lubicon Lake Cree that the Department of Indian Affairs genuinely meant to represent the interests of the Lubicon rather than the interests of oil and gas. Because of Munro’s position and his efforts to have their land claims settled, the

Lubicon community agreed to withhold legal actions directed at the federal government until the Office of Native Claims had a chance to research the claim under the specific claims policy and a joint genealogical study of band members was completed.278 In

August 1984, the federal government released their position on the Lubicon Lake land

276 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, John C. Munro, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Letter to The Honorable Milt Pahl, M.L.A, Minister Responsible for Native Affairs, Government of Alberta, Edmonton, February 17, 1984.

277 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, the previous letter Munro had sent in October, 1984.

278 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, letter from Connelly to Hutchinson.

133 claim.279 The federal government, to the Lubicon’s dismay, had taken the position that the band members were represented by Treaty 8 and those participants entitled to status were those registered members of the Lubicon Lake Band at the date of application.280 The decision infuriated the community because the claim submitted by the band was based on the assertion that the Lubicon Lake Nation had never ceded any land to the Crown and had no representation at the signing of Treaty 8; the federal government had changed its position. The government’s position, at the beginning of 1984, was that the Lubicon were, in fact, left out of Treaty 8 and, therefore, they recommended that the Province address this appropriately. The federal government had changed their position by stating that many of the Lubicon were, in fact, represented at Treaty 8.

The second reason the decision disappointed the Lubicon was that it became another way of dividing the community based along the lines of the Indian Act; determination of Indian status would occur through colonial legislation rather than by the community. Those with status benefitted from the decision, while those without status remained without a reserve; they became a divided community, divisions which exist today. Lennarson described the actions of the government to divide the community as a

“deliberate stalling tactic” used to avoid negative media attention.281 Mainstream media tended to focus on the growing tensions of the community regarding status rather than the land dispute.

279 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, R.M. Connelly, Director, Specific Claims Branch, Letter to Chief Bernard Ominayak, Lubicon Indian Band, August 17, 1984.

280 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, letter from Connelly to Ominayak.

281 Glenbow Museum, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, Fred Lennarson memo to The Mimir Corporation, October 8, 1984.

134

Chief Bernard Ominayak submitted a response outlining his position concerning the actions of the Department of Indian Affairs. Ominayak was outraged that the federal government had betrayed the community’s trust. The community provided the federal government with genealogical and historical information concerning band members in the understanding that the Department of Indian Affairs would do everything possible to reach a fair and equitable land claim settlement that documented “the entitlement of as many of our people as possible.”282 The Department of Indian Affairs’ decision clearly showed that the government did not intend to uphold this agreement and the descendants of those who were deemed, by the government, to have been represented by Treaty 8 would be involved in the land claim. Most of the residents of Lubicon Lake would not be included. The department did not use the information given to them by the community in order to determine who would have Indigenous status or not; they determined status by using Indian Act regulations. The band had remained consistent in their refusal to divide the community based on Treaty 8 or Indian Act hereditary lines; the Department of Indian

Affairs was aware of this. Ominayak noted that the Justice Department had previously stated that they would grant entitlement to registered band members, but the band had rejected the offer and decided to move toward land claim litigation because, “we believed then as we do now that our people as a whole retain unextinguished aboriginal title to our traditional lands.”283

282 Glenbow Archives, Lubicon Lake Cree fonds, Chief Bernard Ominayak letter to R.M. Connelly, Director, Specific Claims Branch, Indian & Northern Affairs, Ottawa, Canada, September 27, 1984.

283 Ominayak’s letter to Connelly.

135

Ominayak resented the fact that an entire year had been wasted while the government deliberated over this information when the community could have gone straight to court and allowed the lawyers to argue the community’s case.284 Throughout that year, the provincial government and the oil and gas companies continued to undermine the land claim while the Lubicon waited for the assistance promised to them from the federal government. The Lubicon also had reason to believe that the Department of Indian Affairs gave much of the information the band had shared with the federal government to the provincial government who were primarily concerned with the continuation of oil and gas development.285

Ominayak’s letter to Indian Affairs marks a change of tone from the calm and patient yet assertive chief that addressed the courts and the Province Alberta in the cases of the property tax notices and injunction application, toward a tone of frustration and anger. The intentions of the provincial government and the ultimate motive of the oil companies in their dealings with the Lubicon were obvious; they were there for the oil.

The Department of Indian Affairs, however, has had a historical and legal responsibility to Indigenous peoples including the Lubicon Lake Nation. The deal was that the Lubicon would not move to litigation against the Department of Indian Affairs thereby allowing the federal department to avoid any negative attention and, in return, the department would consider their case and genuinely assist the Lubicon in their land claims in the ways that the Lubicon felt was fair and just.

284 Ominayak’s letter to Connelly.

285 Ominayak’s letter to Connelly.

136

The result was that the agreement made between the federal government and the

Lubicon resembled the agreements made between the Dominion of Canada and the

Indigenous peoples in the early days of the numbered treaties. The treaties were hoped to be genuine and appeared to be in the interest of both the community and the government, but the government did not hold up to its commitments. The community shared their personal information with the federal government in hopes that the Department of Indian

Affairs would work to resolve their land claim. At this point, both the judicial system and the Department of Indian Affairs, time and time again, since the oil and gas boom of the late 1970s, failed the Lubicon Lake Cree Nation in resolving their efforts to save the traditional territory of the community from industrial destruction. The Lubicon decided to no longer rely on the court systems or the promises of the government; public action to attract attention to their situation was their next step.

Lubicon Lake in Context of Canada

During the 1970s and following the events of the White Paper, Indigenous communities had begun to politicize and organize across Canada in reaction to the growing number of state-facilitated resource development projects in the north. The grounds on which governments could approve northern natural resource development projects were looked at with skepticism and often met with resistance from northern

Indigenous communities. Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa announced a massive hydro project on the east side of James Bay in 1971.286 The Cree and Inuit people of the region

286 Ronald Niezen, Defending the Land: Sovereignty and Forest Life in James Bay Cree Society (Needham Heights, MA: A Pearson Education Company, 1998), 64.

137 feared the destruction of their hunting, trapping, and fishing lands. After years of litigation procedures, the James Bay Cree and the Inuit people of Northern Quebec signed the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975. The agreement outlined an extensive settlement deal for the Cree and Inuit communities of the proposed region.287

This agreement set an important precedent for comprehensive land claims in Canada.

A few years later, in 1977, Justice Thomas Berger released The Mackenzie Valley

Pipeline Inquiry. Two major recommendations were made by Berger in his report: that no industrial development ever occur along the Arctic coast and that, while development is possible within the Mackenzie Valley, the pipeline should not be built for at least ten years while Dene land claims were being settled.288 Policy recommendations reflected his hearings with local communities, particularly Dene and Inuit communities. The report influenced southern Canadians’ perspectives regarding the destruction and neglect of

Indigenous communities in the North.289 Unmitigated resource development of the North was not as popular as it once was now that people saw the impacts that development was having on Indigenous communities. During the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, the

Dene received much attention regarding their experiences with northern resource development from major media outlets including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The exposure communicated to people of southern Canada the effects of northern resource development on communities in the north. The Berger Report, the official

287 Niezen, 71-79.

288 Thomas R. Berger, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: the Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1977), 3, 6.

289 Miller, Lethal Legacy, 152.

138 document released after the Inquiry, placed the lives of people in the context of development into the consciousness of the urban-based southern population of Canada.

The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Mackenzie Valley

Pipeline Inquiry are two examples of the significant shift that took place in the Canadian mainstream media regarding Aboriginal and treaty rights: one within the judicial system, and one as a high profile, federally-funded inquiry. The courts had begun to recognize

Aboriginal and treaty rights, particularly those rights as they related to state-facilitated natural resource development occurring on Indigenous traditional territories. Indigenous politics changed in the seventies. By the end of the decade, Indigenous political organizations were reaching a point of moderation, encouraging communities to enter into tripartite negotiations with the oil and gas companies and governments, while other communities and organizations experienced unprecedented cases and gains for

Indigenous control over natural resources and land use. Tripartite negotiations ensured that industrial development occurred with increased Indigenous participation. Legislative changes regarding Aboriginal and treaty rights, however, increased the ability for self- determination of Indigenous communities. In the latter case, development was not necessarily predetermined as the decision would ultimately be up to the community, yet both cases facilitated the continuation of energy and resource projects.

Lubicon Lake Nation was interested in sovereignty over their political systems and local economy. They were primarily concerned with the state of the community’s traditional subsistence economy. In their efforts to gain some level of control over what happens to the land, they attempted to access the assistance of Indigenous political organizations and the judicial system. The Lubicon people did not, in the end, receive much support on their land claims from political organizations, nor did they have any

139 measure of success through legal avenues. The failures of the Isolated Community

Advisory Board to continue in its work as well as the pre-occupation of the Indian

Association of Alberta with tripartite negotiations with the oil and gas industry meant that there was little support from Indigenous political organizations. The community would have to resolve the land claim without support from the Isolated Communities Advisory

Board or the Indian Association of Alberta.

The judicial system also failed to meet the needs of the people of Lubicon Lake.

While across the country Indigenous communities were resolving comprehensive land claim cases and gaining unprecedented settlements, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench repeatedly sided with the Alberta provincial government and the oil and gas industry. It was clear that the judicial system would only address the needs of those who were still willing to participate in the industrial transformation of the landscape. Coulthard notes that the Supreme Court has only made efforts to protect Aboriginal rights when they do not infringe on colonial projects of land, labour, and resources.290 This helps to explain why the Lubicon Lake Cree were repeatedly unsuccessful in attaining protection from the courts; if their land claim was successful, the Lubicons intended to disrupt too much development.

Constant failures through the judicial system and the disappointment and betrayal of the Department of Indian Affairs did not discourage the community in attempting to gain international recognition for their plight; in fact, they became more determined. The upcoming Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988 and the adjoining Glenbow Museum exhibit, The Spirit Sings, were to showcase Indigenous cultures of Canada and various

290 Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks, 41.

140

Indigenous artifacts.291 Ominayak and Lennarson saw an opportunity in the connections of the provincial and federal governments and major oil and gas companies, such as Shell, to the events taking place on their land and in the courts and announced an international boycott of the games with a focus on the Glenbow exhibit. Their logic, as stated by

Lennarson, was as follows:

“The irony seems painfully obvious. A display of North American

Indian artifacts to attract people to the Winter Olympics is being organized

by interests who are still actively seeking to destroy Indian people: namely,

the Alberta Government and its oil-company allies. The Band will

therefore be writing these various museums asking that they support the

Band’s boycott of the Calgary Winter Games by refusing to loan these

artifacts at this time.” 292

The success of the boycott is debatable in terms of how many museums actually withheld pieces for political reasons. Duncan Cameron, the director of the Glenbow

Museum, stated that out of 110 museums or private collectors, that 12 boycotted the show, whereas, Lennarson said that 23 boycotted and resulted in “badly diminishing sections of the show.”293 Julia Harrison, the curator of the exhibit, clarifies that while 23

291 Julia Harrison, “Completing a Circle: The Spirit Sings,” in Anthropology, Public Policy and Native Peoples in Canada, ed. Noel Dyck and James B. Waldram, 334-357 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Kingston University Press, 1993).

292 Goddard, 144.

293 Goddard, 157.

141 may have boycotted, only 10 of those were approached by the Glenbow to submit material.294 Nevertheless, the boycott received a lot of attention.

Following the boycott, the Lubicon were invited to the United Nations Human

Rights Committee to plead their case. In 1990, the United Nations Human Rights

Committee ruled that “so long as they continue,” the threats of development on the

Lubicon way of life are a violation of fundamental human rights.295 On November 1,

2005 the Committee reaffirmed its earlier conclusion that Canada is violating the Lubicon peoples’ human rights and urged Canada to negotiate a settlement with Lubicon Lake.296

Today, the issue of land claims for the Lubicon Lake Nation remains unresolved.

While the Lubicon have generally been unsuccessful in stopping industrial resource exploitation from occurring in their territory, they have been successful in gaining international attention to the ecological destruction of the land as well as, and maybe more significantly, raising awareness toward the Canadian and provincial governments’ attitude toward Indigenous peoples and their rights. There are legal barriers to resource development and settler activities in Canada based on stringent legislation that is responsible to Indigenous peoples including, but not limited to, the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the numbered treaties of the Northwest, and the Indian Act. While the intent behind instigating the treaties and the Act may have been to control land and administer the lives of Indigenous peoples, there are specific parameters within the treaties and the

294 Harrison, 339.

295 Chief Bernard Ominayak with Kevin Thomas, “These Are Lubicon Lands: A First Nation Forced to Step into the Regulatory Gap,” in Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada, Eds. Agyeman, Julian, Peter Cole, Randolph Haluza- DeLay & Pat O’Riley (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009) 120.

296 Ominayak, 121.

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Act that ensure specific rights for Indigenous peoples and the continuance of their desired ways of life. By acknowledging the rights of Indigenous people, the state is forced to take responsibility for its actions.

The Lubicon Lake Cree Nation’s ongoing struggle with oil and gas development as well as their relationship with the federal government of Canada and the provincial government of Alberta shows that Indigenous peoples’ local economies and ways of life are intertwined with northern natural resource development and the political economy of the Canadian state. The formation of the treaties had the intent of recognizing Indigenous rights to land and served as a contract between newcomers and the Indigenous population.

The weaknesses of the treaties and the subsequent treatment of the treaties by the provincial and federal governments had varying impacts on Indigenous communities in the regions in which they were signed. As seen by the signing of Treaty 8, First Nations in northeastern Alberta continue to benefit and become disproportionately disadvantaged by the treaty. That depends on a combination of their geography with the political and economic intentions of the oil and gas industry and state governments. Being isolated for such a long time during the colonial period allowed for them to maintain a subsistence economy, yet being directly in line with oil and gas development strongly impacted their activities during the seventies, which led to the events that unfolded in the eighties. The case of Lubicon Lake Nation is an important example of the development of the inequitable relationship in Canada between the federal government, provincial governments, and Native communities as well as the failures of Indigenous political organizations to support and represent individual communities.

The Lubicon Lake Cree community had a thriving hunting, trapping, and fishing economy up until the oil boom of the late seventies. Their geographic isolation from

143 northern resource development activities was due largely to their exclusion from Treaty 8.

When the nature of resource development shifted in Canada, however, toward northern resource development projects, including mass-scale oil and gas developments, the region was no longer ignored. They watched the roads carve up their hunting grounds and newcomers enter, unapologetically, in search of skilled labour that local residents could not attain, even if they wanted to. Due to their exclusion from treaty rights, there was little hope or interest in the resource development-intensive wage labour. The subsequent loss of the bush economy was a major reason for the Lubicon’s decision to assert their

Aboriginal and treaty rights and seek a land claim settlement. The primary concern for the

Lubicon was attaining self-determination and political control over their territory so that they would have more influence regarding which activities took place on their land.

144

Conclusion This thesis reveals the complex relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state and the oil and gas industry in Alberta. Industrial resource development in the northern regions of Canada has had a major impact on the material conditions of

Indigenous communities. The situation is obvious in northern Alberta where tar sands development has ravaged the forest and negatively affected the communities in the region. The impact and scale of tar sand development, however, has not uniformly affected communities. Communities, in fact, have had agency in relation to the massive spread of oil and gas development. These varied relationships have been, to some extent, determined by the history of Indigenous political organizing in response to colonialism more generally in Canada. This thesis interrogates that history.

The treaties, in theory, were negotiations and agreements between the Crown and

Indigenous peoples that addressed the fact that Indigenous peoples in Canada had the right to live as they chose while allowing for European settlement and resource development to continue in North America. The two interests contradicted each other.

Previously, Indigenous peoples were business partners in the fur trade and the military, but the newly formed Canadian government of the late 1800s saw Indigenous peoples as an obstacle to resource development and the expedient settlement of European immigrants. Policies of assimilation aimed at absorbing Indigenous peoples into Euro-

Canadian society developed into the twentieth century. The Indian Act divided

Indigenous communities based on arbitrary Indian statuses, the rise of residential schools broke up communities by taking away children and educating them in European religious institutions, and those commissioned by the state to represent Indian Affairs dictated the movements of Indigenous peoples into and out of settlements and traditional territories.

145

Broken promises were a point of contention for many years between Indigenous peoples, their leaders, the state, and settlers. Pan-Indigenous political organizations developed in response to those betrayals.

Pan-Indigenous political organizations started with the early days of colonial settlement, but they changed over the years to reflect the intentions of their leaders and the political and economic impacts of the changing resource state. The Indian Association of Alberta initially represented all Indigenous peoples of Alberta and had socialist roots to better deal with burgeoning capitalism developing in western Canada after the Second

World War. Interest in the organization waned amongst Indigenous peoples, particularly following the influences of non-Indigenous people in the group. The 1960s, however, saw the rise of radical and militant Native nationalists. Harold Cardinal, a young and charismatic Cree person from northern Alberta and a member of the newly educated class of Indigenous youth, led the Indian Association of Alberta in its successful efforts to demand that the Canadian government repeal its unpopular White Paper, a policy paper aimed at assimilating Indigenous peoples into Euro-Canadian settler society. The efforts of Cardinal and the other influential Indigenous leaders of the time had the impact of transforming the relationship between Indigenous political organizations and the federal government. The leaders of Indigenous groups gained negotiating power, which was critical in the decades to come.

Native politics in Alberta shifted during the period of massive exploitation of oil and gas in the north in the mid 1970s. Negotiations between Indigenous communities, the federal and provincial governments, and the oil and gas industry began to take place. Oil and gas development intensification of the region affected all northern residents, yet only some communities benefitted financially from the industrial changes. A conflict began

146 between Harold Cardinal and Joe Dion, the popular and influential chief of Kehewin reserve, regarding Native nationalism and its place within the newly developing tar sand industry. Dion believed that Indigenous communities needed to have a strong presence as a separate entity within negotiations. In other words, Dion asserted that Indigenous communities should be respected as equal stakeholders and negotiated with individually without state interference whereas Cardinal began to work for the Department of Indian

Affairs as a way of making change through government institutions.

By the end of the 1970s, neither leader rejected industrial development and neither leader was particularly interested in strengthening pan-Indigenous political organizations.

They went to work for themselves and their individual communities, losing perspective of the greater good and the natural landscape. The trend toward individualist leadership combined with the government and industry’s efforts to continue oil and gas development of the tar sands had differential impacts on Indigenous communities in northern Alberta.

The state no longer had to coerce Indigenous communities in the dispossession of their land, so long as they were distinctly recognized as active participants within the colonial resource model. Pan-Indigenous groups fell apart, as seen by the demise of the Isolated

Communities Advisory Board, traditional territories began to experience industrial pressure affecting hunting, fishing, and trapping, and other communities experienced massive destruction and received little to no compensation from either the state or the oil and gas corporations operating in the region. Lubicon Lake Nation is one such community.

The Lubicon Lake Nation was without treaty representation in 1899 when Treaty

8, representing northeastern Alberta, was signed. Their exclusion had minimal impact because of their isolation from colonial activities until the 1970s when oil and gas

147 development of the north intensified. The destruction of their traditional territory happened quickly with little time to react. The failure of the Isolated Communities

Advisory Board to represent the Lubicon and the waning interest of prominent leaders such as Dion and Cardinal left Lubicon leaders on their own. Chief Bernard Ominayak and the community’s lawyer, Fred Lennarson, continue today to fight for land rights of the Lubicon. They have been successful in gaining international attention in Canada’s continued abuse of Indigenous peoples and thwarting attempts at just land claim settlements but have been unsuccessful in saving the bush.

The Lubicon’s story has arisen from an effort to interrogate the political economy of northern Alberta in light of the material conditions of the community. Their story reflects a trend toward increasing class stratification between Indigenous communities in

Canada in relation to colonialism and natural resource development as well as the accommodation of individual political leaders. The roots of Indigenous communities’ relationships with the dominant resource sector run deep in Alberta and manifest itself differently in each community. For example, what happened in Kehewin is radically different from what happened in Lubicon Lake, especially when the oil and gas industry encroached into the region. Pan-Indigenous political organizations and leaders helped shape those varying experiences. The absence of an anti-capitalist approach to Native nationalism assisted the facilitation of tri-partite agreements between Indigenous communities, such as Kehewin and Frog Lake, with oil and gas industries, such as

Syncrude and Esso, and the provincial and federal governments. Lubicon Lake Nation and other isolated communities, in contrast, were negatively affected by environmental destruction of resource development but had almost no negotiating power, and therefore did not receive any monetary compensation for the destruction of the bush economy.

148

Historians such as Rene Fumoleau and Cole Harris have revealed the ways in which regional geography has impacted the social economic lives of Indigenous peoples in the Northwest at the early stages of colonialism. Sarah Carter, John Milloy, and Joan

Sangster have shown that policies and administrative laws of the Canadian state have been responsible for the development of the abysmal conditions of Indigenous communities throughout the first half of the twentieth century. This work aims to draw similar connections during a more recent history of northeastern Alberta. The focus on pan-Indigenous political organizations of Alberta and their efforts to resist encroaching settler resource industrial activities as well as assimilation policies of the federal and provincial governments builds on the political theories of Howard Adams, Taiaiaike

Alfred, and Glen Sean Coulthard. The study of the Indian Association of Alberta and the

Isolated Communities Advisory Board shows that the absence of an anti-capitalist approach has led to tripartite agreements with oil and gas, which has led to little more than a politics of recognition, leaving communities with minimal economic and political power and a ravaged landscape. These histories and political theories have established the base of the stories that have surfaced from northeastern Alberta during the 1970s and early 1980s.

These stories are told in order to understand the true impacts of destructive resource models on politically marginalized groups. While unique to their own specific circumstances, the story of the Lubicon Lake Nation is but one story of many cases in

Canada where a northern Indigenous community experienced the loss of their traditional subsistence economy because of the natural resource extraction system Canada has been built upon. The development of pan-Indigenous political organizations in Canada came as a response to a serious concern toward the destruction of thriving bush economies. Over

149 time, political organizations eventually became more individualist and supportive of the resource model. It comes as no surprise that individual communities benefitted monetarily, though for a short time, while other communities received nothing.

Environmental destruction, however, is not as discriminate as oil and gas industry royalties, and the devastation of northern regions demonstrates the intricate connection that communities have with their landscapes.

150

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