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The Globe and Mail, September 27, 1944
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In this article from the Globe and Mail, they talk about getting funds for Thanksgiving. They also mention how men form Mistawasis who are allowed have signed up for war.
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The Guide
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“The Guide” is from Battleford Industrial School newspaper that the students wrote.
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The Herington Tribune, April 9, 1885
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In this newsletter article, the paper mentions the Northwest Rebellion and the Riel Rebellion., Article can also be found as the Eskridge Home Weekly, April 9, 1885, Topeka State Journal April 1, 1885 and Alma News, April 8, 1885.
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The Importance of Family Ties to Members of Cowessess First Nation
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--Description taken from "The Importance of Family Ties to Members of Cowessess First Nation"--
This study links the kinship practices of contemporary members of Cowessess First Nation to the historical notions of kinship regulated in the 'law of the people' and conveyed through the trickster stories of Wisakejak. Specifically, this study examines how Cowessess band members continued adherence to principles of the traditional laws of kinship has undermined the imposition of the legal and scholarly definitions of 'Indian.' By acknowledging kinship relations to band members who either had not been federally recognized as Indians prior to 1985, or were urban members disconnected from the reserve. This acknowledgement defies the general perception that First Nations people have internalized the legal definition of Indian, and in the process rendered traditional kinship meaningless. It also questions the accepted idea that conflict is the only possible outcome of any relationship between "old" members and "newly recognized" Indians. The importance of kinship to Cowessess band members blurs the legal (as defined by the Indian Act) boundaries between status Indians, Bill C-31s, Métis, and non-status Indians and scholarly distinctions made between tribal groups, proving the artificiality of those boundaries. In the pre-reserve period, band membership was fluid, flexible, and inclusive. There were a variety of ways that individuals or groups of people could become members of a band, but what was of particular importance was that these new members assumed some sort of kinship role with its associated responsibilities. Kinship roles were carefully encoded in the traditional stories of the Cree trickster, Wisakejak. Wisakejak stories were "the law of the people" that outlined, among other things, the peoples' social interaction including the incorporation of individuals into a band. Contemporary members of Cowessess First Nation, in spite of outsiders' classifications of Aboriginal peoples, continue to define community identity and interaction based on principles outlined in the Wisakejak stories. Cowessess members' interpretations of contemporary kinship practices, then, are significant to understanding how contemporary First Nations put into practice their beliefs about kinship roles and responsibilities and demonstrates that these practices and beliefs are rooted in traditional cultural values.
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The Indian Treaties of 1876
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This document recalls John Andrew Kerr who remembers the signing of Treaty Six. Kerr also mentions events leading up to the signing and moments after.
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The Ithaca Journal, August 4, 1938
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This newspaper article from Ithaca New York talks about how Chief George Dreaver has died at the age of 85. Chief Dreaver was the chief of Mistawasis for 55 years
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The Knox College Monthly and Presbyterian Magazine: [Vol. 15, no. 2 (Dec. 1891)]
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In this journal article, talks how their mission is to have aboriginal people become capable members of society, meaning that the aboriginal people will have the rights and duties of citizenship. It is also mentioning the start of foreign missions and how the church got it started. The article talks more about the First Nation communities in the summer and winter. The report also mentions essential members of the communities.
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The Lethbridge Herald, August 7, 1941
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The Lethbridge Herald newspaper talks about World War Two, and in a small section of the paper, they mention men of the Mistawasis First Nation community who are prepared to go to war. The part of the newspaper clipping talks about a speech Chief Joe Dreaver gave at a conference at North Battleford Saskatchewan.
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The North-West Mounted Police 1873-1905
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--Description taken from "The North-West Mounted Police 1873-1905: Law Enforcement and the Social Order in the Canadian North-West"--
The North-West Mounted Police were created in 1873 to perform a specific mission; to ensure that Canadian administration and settlement of the newly-acquired North-West Territories was carried out in a peaceful and orderly manner. The police did so with a remarkable degree of success. Contacts between white society and that of the Indians in the region were not marred by violence. Largely because of the efforts of the police only a few small bands of Indians participated in the 1885 rebellion. Crime and violence among the settler population remained firmly under control at all times. This was not merely a negative achievement because the police helped to create a climate in which the population of the North-West Territories were confident that justice was being done. The efficiency of the police and their popularity with the public was so great that the Canadian government was eventually compelled to recognize that the force had outgrown its original terms of reference. The Mounted Police developed gradually into a permanent institution, too valuable to be lightly discarded. The reasons for the success of the Mounted Police can be divided into two categories; structural and sociological. The structure of the force was adapted quite deliberately from that of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the prototypical British colonial police force of the nineteenth century. The N.W.M.P., however, had advantages not enjoyed by similar organizations elsewhere in the world. Officers of the force exercised extensive judicial powers. For the first decade or so of their existence, the police carried out vitually all functions of government in the North-West Territories. Above all the Mounted Police were not an alien imposition but a genuine expression of the society they served. Sociologically, the Mounted Police can be seen to have attracted, through a highly complex process of selection, a consistently competent group of officers and men. The elite nature of the force together with public acceptance of the high social standing of Mounted Policemen freed them from the pressures of local opinion and power which might otherwise have hampered them. The Mounted Police played so large a part in the creation of western Canadian society that by the time their original assignment was complete they had become an important part of the way in which that society defined itself and hence indispensable.
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The Ochapowace Reserve
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--Description taken from "The Ochapowace Reserve"--
Treaty Four was signed on September 15, 1874 at Fort Qu'Appelle. The chiefs who signed the treaty on behalf of their bands were of the belief that the treaty was a nation to nation agreement and were doing so as sovereign independent nations. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the First Nations, this relationship quickly eroded.
The specific purpose of this research has been to demonstrate how the inhabitants of the Ochapowace Reserve have resisted the colonial practices of the Canadian government. These practices, which have been exercised since 1874, have resulted in creating a state of dependency and poverty for the people on the Ochapowace Reserve. The paper focuses on relatively recent contemporary issues because they illustrate how strongly and persistently the Canadian government has adhered to its colonial practices from 1876 to the present. The project also concentrates strictly on the Ochapowace Reserve and its residents because they represent an example of the people who endured the policies of the colonial Canadian government.
Much of the substance for this thesis concerning the colonial practices that the Canadian government applied in their administration of the Ochapowace Reserve Indians was abstracted mainly from written works and government records. A secondary source, albeit a limited one, was the use of oral tradition and oral history. This oral component, drawn from the knowledge of community members, serves as an historical base and as a parallel support for the written sources. A problem arose when it became evident that many of the more knowledgeable persons who were important transmitters of the oral history were no longer alive. As a consequence, reliance was placed on individuals who were believed to have direct or secondary knowledge about the history of the reserve. Nonetheless, the evidence collected from these informants provided enough of a basis to construct a narrative to illustrate how colonialism has impacted Ochapowace people. In a sense these individuals were viewed as repositories of information, but this was subject to the limits of their memories and understanding of the history of the reserve.
The collected information, written and oral, was used to explain the current circumstances confronting the people of Ochapowace within the context of colonialism and its accompanying capitalism. It was also used to illustrate how the band has resisted the government's colonial control. Over the years, the resultant forces of subjugation and control by the government created a situation of dependency and poverty for the people on the Ochapowace Reserve. The evidence strongly suggests that the current dependent condition that led to a state of poverty for the Ochapowace Indians is a direct result of colonialism.
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The Ottawa Journal, August 16, 1973
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In this article from the Ottawa Journal, Peter F. Frank wrote about the last hanging for the rebellion, and the speech Apischaskoos said before he died.
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The Ottawa Journal, November 18,1974
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The Ottawa Journal states that in November of 1947, seven people died by fire. The RCMP say that the fire was started by one of the children. It is also believed that those that did die had died from asphyxiation.
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The Political Economy of Indian Health and Disease in the Canadian NorthWest
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--Description taken from "The Political Economy of Indian Health and Disease in the Canadian NorthWest"--
The dissertation identifies the origins of the present disparity of health conditions between Indian communities and mainstream society in western Canada. It examines the relationship between economics and health of Indian populations in the Canadian northwest from the early eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It documents the development of the fur trade in relation to changes in the geographical distribution of aboriginal societies resulting from the differential impact of introduced European diseases. For a period of one hundred and fifty years, infections that came as a consequence of trade were the primary source of mortality due to illness among First Nations. In addition, social pathologies resulting from European trade strategies affected the well being of communities in the northwest. Climate and environment contributed to the differential success of many groups integrated into the global economy through the fur trade.
Canada's acquisition of the northwest changed this pattern. Its commitment to the terms of Treaties opened the west for agricultural development and settlement. The Dominion's development strategy, the National Policy, coincided with the extinction of the bison, undermining the ability of plains Indians to compel the government to deliver on their Treaty commitments. To facilitate the implementation of its economic and political order, the Dominion used its famine relief strategy as a means to subjugate them. By the early 1880s, tuberculosis emerged as a full blown epidemic among the Indians of the plains. The spread of tuberculosis through the Indian population of the plains was the result of the protracted period of malnutrition. Punitive measures imposed after the brief armed resistance to Dominion hegemony further weakened the population already largely infected with the disease. Severe mortality weakened the population already largely infected with the disease. Severe mortality resulted from the spread of acute infectious disease among the compromised population. Within fifteen years of signing Treaties many plains populations declined to their demographic nadir.
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The Presbyterian Record Vol. 125, Iss. 11,
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-Description taken from "A Mustard Seed: Trudy Meyers's Short Ministry to the people of Mistawasis left a lasting impression."
It seemed to be a match made in heaven. The congregation felt new hope with [Trudy Meyer]'s arrival and took to her as if she were one of their own. Trudy took to Mistawasis as if she were native to it. Even a northern Saskatchewan winter couldn't dampen her enthusiasm. This was clear to Trudy's sister, Tilly, when she visited Mistawasis for a week in January. On their way to church on Sunday, the sisters encountered big drifts from the previous evening's snowfall along the gravel road. Trudy simply stepped on the gas in her new 4[Symbol Not Transcribed]4 and plowed through them.
To the congregation, it was, as Harvey put it, the quality of Trudy's time with them that mattered, not the quantity. On March 10, Trudy's family drove to Mistawasis Memorial where many of Trudy's friends welcomed them. The furnace had been turned on to warm the church, and candles were placed across the front of the sanctuary. Harvey rang the church bell three times in Trudy's memory. It was a heart-breakingly sorrowful yet beautiful moment. Harvey asked everyone present to stand in a circle and join hands. He prayed that God would help Trudy's family in their grief. Then he gave thanks for God's blessing to the native people of Mistawasis--for the gifts of Trudy's time, love and devotion.
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The Presbyterian Records Vol.22 No.6 (June 1897)
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In a journal entry written by Rev. A. W. Lewis, he mentions where Mistawasis community is located, and he also talks about past reverends. In the entry Lewis says what he did to his house in the winter to make it warmer, Lewis then goes on to talk about the families of past reverends and where they are now.