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Chapter 16 | Joy Cohnstaedt (continued) In 1964, I joined the first archaeological team sent out by the Glenbow Foundation to work in Alberta. For part of the season, we camped on the Peigan reservation, digging a site that had been used repeatedly by nomadic peoples over a very long time, probably because of its proximity to water and shelter. Our contact with the First Nations community was limited, though we were curious about each other. Eventually, we developed some trust and were invited to attend both a burial on the reservation and a nearby Sundance. Our next site was in the midst of a cattle ranch, but we camped with the bulls, bullocks and cows this time. There is little question that early hunters in southern Alberta concentrated their hunting effort on bison. A major effort on our part was to dig the early test holes of the kill site, now known as the Fletcher Site. Subsequent digs at that site resulted in sufficient information to include it in the Syncrude Gallery in the Provincial Museum in Alberta. The final site was further north and near the oilfields. This time we camped near oilmen, and for the first time we felt insecure; drunken workers raided our camp in search of women. This site was the least productive of the three. I returned to Saskatchewan and continued to spend my available weekends digging at the trading post site. The Aboriginal population in Saskatchewan was already sizeable and is now predicted to become as high as 40 per cent in the not too distant future. Regina was the home on an active amateur theatre community and an annual summer pageant, the “Trial of Louis Riel.” His execution by hanging brought to an end the dream of a Métis nation in western Canada, followed by the Northwest Rebellion of 1885 and the Battle of Batoche. I joined the Little Theatre, and met and worked with Harry Daniels; he wanted to be on stage while I stayed backstage. Later I supported his unsuccessful NDP candidacy for a federal seat in an upper middle class constituency in Winnipeg (near the historic Red River Settlement and the home of Riel). Although the Native Council of Canada was a strong voice for Métis nationalism, tensions between western Métis and eastern non-Status Indians led to the formation of the western-based Métis National Council in 1983 (Harry Daniels became one of the Métis community’s outspoken leaders). Similar divisions occurred at the provincial level. For example, the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan split into two organizations in 1988. The Saskatchewan Federation of Indians continued to represent Status Indians (those identified by the terms of the Indian Act). Elsewhere in Canada the indigenous population is represented by a range of organizations in support of a variety of concerns, confirming the cultural and regional diversity of the people. Separate Native postsecondary institutions were created. The Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College, which became the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College and now the First Nations University of Canada, was established in Regina approximately thirty years ago. Originally it was linked to the University of Regina, governed by elders, and jointly funded by the provincial and federal governments. The Gabriel Dumont Institute, an Aboriginal and cultural center with locations throughout Saskatchewan, is active in maintaining and encouraging Métis heritage. Other Canadian universities have established Native Studies Programmes. Aboriginal organizations have established community facilities such as the Woodland Cultural Centre Museum on the Six Nations reservation near Brantford, Ontario, and Métis Friendship Centres throughout Canada. Though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, these contacts with Aboriginal peoples were my first experiences of “fourth world peoples,” the still colonized indigenous minorities living in complex modern nations. They lived not only on the streets of cities and towns as I had first known indigenous peoples, but also on reservations, and like their urban relatives, as subjugated peoples. Until now, my knowledge of the peoples of the Great Plains was based on changes in projectile points, their location, and other artefacts such as end scrapers, random flake scrapers, and bifacial knives, as well as some bone tools. Unfortunately, the objects manufactured from skin and sinew and wood and plant fibres have not survived in the archaeological record. And precontact anthropological evidence was based on indigenous oral records and later, after early contacts, on the written observations of others. The stereotypical image of an Indian held by the dominant society was of a Plains Indian walking, or riding a horse in the Calgary Stampede or playing the villain in movies, or being portrayed in advertising for GM’s Pontiac car as a warrior brave. Even though Plains cultures were constantly changing, the Pan-Indian stereotype was dressed in Plains-style feathered headdresses and skin costumes, thus promoting an identity well beyond their time and place in the history of the First Nations. |
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