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Western Oblate Studies 2

Residential schooling at fort chipewyan and fort resolution 1874-1974

Introduction

Residential schooling at fort chipewyan and fort resolution 1874-1974

Robert Carney, Professor
Faculty of Education
University of Alberta

Pas disponible in Francais.

THE NATIVE-WILDERNESS EQUATION

For most of the century following the establishment of a Catholic orphanage and school at Fort Providence in 1867 (the first such institution in the Diocese), the schooling provided in places like Chipewyan and Resolution was based on a consensus reached among traders, missionaries, and the police. The consensus, which has been termed the Native-wilderness equation, appeared to have the tacit approval of indigenous groups, and was more or less held by federal and provincial politicians who showed little interest in the well being of the area's Native population until the 1950s.⁴ Despite the occasional differences between the two levels of government on the nature of Native-white relationships, it was the traders and missionaries, those counted on to maintain control of the region, who adhered to the equation fairly consistently:

both trader and missionary saw the wilderness-where traditional beliefs had been tempered by the promise of the gospel, and the vagaries of the hunt had been lessened by the benefits of trade as the best-if not the only, environment for the area's aboriginal population. Catholic missionaries were particularly given to fostering the wilderness archetype, the Christian trapper, who was free to follow his traditional ways, subject of course, to certain, but what were thought to be not incompatible trade and religious expectations.⁵

The equation affirmed that if one were religious, law-abiding, and a good trapper and hunter one could “survive in a good way”⁶ whether one was schooled or not The schooling provided in the north, therefore, was based on the assumption that most Métis and Indian children would take up a life of hunting, trapping, and fishing, and that the three R's, while not essential to such a mode of living, would nonetheless give them certain advantages.

In the discussions that follow, the concept of the Native-wilderness equation will be examined in terms of its rise, decline, and revitalization with particular reference to the equation's educational implications in the communities of Fort Chipewyan and Fort Resolution. Unlike areas to the south where Native schooling was seen as a means of introducing new economies, such as ranching and farming, the Native-wilderness equation sought to maintain the traditional hunting-trapping economy. Hence, it became a basic principle of Métis and Indian schooling in the Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith in the late nineteenth century, and largely remained so until the 1950s. There was some opposition to the concept as well as inconsistency in its application, but it was not seriously challenged until after World War II, when a coalition of government, professional and non-Native community interests deemed the equation to have no further utility. The new governmental order led to a series of initiatives ostensibly designed to enhance the welfare of the region's aboriginal population. Although differences existed among the federal, territorial and provincial governments in matters relating to resource development and social programmes, there was sufficient agreement between these various jurisdictions to determine what Native people needed, especially in the area of formal education. These government policies, however, particularly those which advocated integrated education, began to be openly challenged by Native spokespersons in the 1970s.⁷ Two notable instances of this phenomenon are Indian Control of Indian Education, published by the National Indian Brotherhood in 1971,⁸ and The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (1977).⁹ Documents such as these not only challenged the direction governments had been taking, they also did much to resurrect the concept of the Native-wilderness equation and its inherent educational implications.

While the Native-wilderness equation applied to those communities in the Diocese that had residential schools, it had in fact particular reference to Fort Chipewyan and Fort Resolution which were the well-springs of Catholic missionary effort further north. Substantial Métis populations were present at Chipewyan and Resolution when Catholic missionaries arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. The Métis, "who made up much of the workforce of the HBC and were linked by marriage to the Natives of the District ... shared [a] language and faith" with Alexandre Taché and his Oblate colleague, Henri Faraud, the first Catholic missionaries to enter the Mackenzie watershed. Without the Métis' support and the links that "these descendents of early French traders"¹⁰ had with the Dene, it is unlikely that the Oblates could have succeeded in establishing permanent missions at Chipewyan and Resolution by the mid-1850s.

Much less Métis support was available when Vital Grandin, Taché's coadjutor, decided to build a mission near the source of the Mackenzie River in 1861. Although there was a fishery nearby, the site did not have a trading post or a resident Métis population, nor was it frequented by the Dene of the area. Named "Providence" by Grandin, it became known to the area's Slave Indians as "the Fort of the Priests."¹¹ Conditions surrounding the establishment in 1926 of a Catholic residential school at Aklavik, a centre of Anglican influence, also differed from those that prevailed in Chipewyan and Resolution. Not only was there no significant Métis group in the area, the settlement's Inuit, Loucheux, and Half-Breed population was apparently wary about the Oblates coming into what Charles Stewart, Minister of the Interior, referred to as "English Church Territory" in commenting on the controversy.¹² Gabriel Breynat, Bishop of the Vicariate from 1902 to 1943, rejected Stewart's suggestion that a gentlemen's agreement be struck in which the Indian missions would be left to the Oblates in exchange for Catholic non-interference in Inuit territories such as Aklavik:

I hope you will not resent it too much if, instead of following your advice, however friendly it be, to come to some agreement with the representatives of the Anglican church, I rather stand by the directives imparted to me by our ecclesiastical superior in Rome.¹³

The Métis proved to be effective intermediaries between the Oblates and the Dene and played a significant role in proselytizing the latter in the regions around Fort Chipewyan and Fort Resolution. The results of this Métis-Oblate alliance were clearly manifested in the negotiations leading up to and immediately following the signing of Treaty Eight. Comments by the Cree and Montagnais Chiefs at the Treaty signing at Fort Chipewyan in 1899 that they and their people were Catholics,¹⁴ and those by the Chipewyan Chiefs to the Minister of the Interior that the Indians of Fort Resolution "were all Catholics, without a single exception”¹⁵ attest to the success that Métis-Oblate evangelization had over the previous half-century.

Treaty Eight, which applied to northern Alberta and the southern Mackenzie, included a clause which, when seen in the context of the Indian Act, was an important factor in the conceptualization of the Native wilderness equation. Unlike earlier, southern treaties, such as Nos. Six and Seven, which promised teachers once the Indians were settled on reserves,¹⁶ the Treaty Eight commitment recognized the nomadic and wilderness orientations of those who were granted official Indian status: "Her Majesty agrees to pay the salaries of said teachers to instruct the children of said Indians as to Her Majesty's Government of Canada may seem advisable."¹⁷ Despite its lack of specificity, the clause was interpreted to mean that Indian schooling opportunities would not depend on permanent settlement and would likely entail accommodation as well as instruction for some children in a residential setting. Moreover, the Indian signatories at Fort Chipewyan and Fort Resolution were promised by the Treaty Commissioners that any schooling provided to their children would be "exclusively Catholic."¹⁸ Similar promises were made in the negotiations that led to the signing of Treaty Eleven, in 1921, which contained the same schooling clause as Treaty Eight and which applied to Indian children who went to school at Aklavik and Fort Providence. ¹⁹

The Métis, however, were not promised any special educational benefits. They were expected to derive whatever assistance they could from the Northwest Territories School Ordinance which meant among other things, setting up school boards which were to be elected by local ratepayers. Such a course of action was inappropriate for most Métis who were unencumbered by such matters as land titles and taxation. They either had to pay the missions for their children's schooling or rely on the church's generosity or seek government relief. The latter possibility proved to be a frustrating experience for the Fort Resolution Métis,²⁰ and even more so for those in Fort Chipewyan after that community became part of Alberta in 1905.²¹ By the early part of this century, the federal, territorial and provincial governments had, to a great extent, determined their schooling responsibilities insofar as Native children were concerned, namely to leave educational programmes in the hands of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Both denominations spent much, often unrewarded, effort in attempting to pry assistance from governments who were directly accountable for formal education in areas beyond white settlement.

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