“They’d Lost Everything and Were Not Qualified”: The Legacy of the Unmet Education Promises Made in Treaty 7

Tarisa Dawn Little

doi:10.29173/mruhr191

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the education promises made in Treaty 7 by the Crown and federal government of Canada. Signed on the banks of the Bow River at Blackfoot Crossing in 1877, the treaty was desired by both government officials and Indigenous Nations in what is now southern Alberta—the Tsuu T’ina, the Stoney Nakoda, and the Blackfoot Confederacy: Siksika, Piikani, Kainai. As this thesis will demonstrate though, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples viewed the meaning of the treaty in conflicting ways. This paper focuses on the creation and management of the schools in the Treaty 7 territories from 1877, the year Treaty 7 was “signed”, to 1923, the year in which industrial and boarding schools were merged to form the new category of “residential school” and the decade in which government policy for schools for Indigenous peoples began to take a new, less ambitious direction. The implementation of schools by the Department of Indian Affairs and their church partners, the type of education that was being offered to First Nations peoples, as well as First Nations responses will be examined.

Highlights

Treaty 7 promised education to Indigenous peoples in Southern Alberta
This paper will focus on the creation and management of the schools in the Treaty 7 territories from 1877, the year Treaty 7 was “signed”,2 to 1923, the year in which industrial and boarding schools were merged to form the new category of “residential school” and the decade in which government policy for schools for Indigenous peoples began to take a new, less ambitious direction
In 1920 Duncan Campbell Scott, the head of the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada, was adamant that the government’s plan to assimilate4 First Nations peoples was the correct course. In his words: I want to get rid of the Indian problem

Summary

Tarisa Little

Treaty 7 promised education to Indigenous peoples in Southern Alberta. the creation and management of these schools reveals that education was not the primary focus of the Crown, and that Christianization and assimilation were the driving forces in the creation of Residential schools. No government assistance has been given as yet, in this direction.” Government bureaucrats such as the Indian Commissioner though, instead highlighted the problems they faced when trying to open schools: the desolate locations of reserves; difbiculties securing teachers; indifferent parents; and a lack of clothing for the children. He did though, point out that the school at Morleyville and on the Kainai reserve “have been conducted with marked success” and annual reports of the Department of Indian Affairs for the 1880s reveal that schools continued to be opened to the point that the Piikani, Siksika, Kainai, Tsuu T’ina and Nakoda Nations all had access to schools

Government Involvement

Provincial Government of Alberta and Federal Government of Canada