Ambitious publishing effort

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Ahtahkakoop: The Epic Account of a Plains Cree Head Chief, His People, and Their Struggle for Survival 1816-1896

By Deanna Christensen

850 pages (hc), $49.95

Ahtahkakoop Publishing

Ahtahkakoop is an ambitious volume that presents, in minute detail, the life story of Chief Ahtahkakoop (Starblanket) and, by extension, the culture and history of the people in his community and the events surrounding their move to a reserve at Sandy Lake, Sask., after the signing of Treaty 6. The self-published book is a joint project of the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation and several corporate and government sponsors.

Deanna Christensen, a former Moose Jaw Times Herald reporter and information co-ordinator for both the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina, has conducted an impressive amount of research. The book, which took 14 years to complete, starts with the Cree creation story. It ends at the period just after treaty-making, filling the gaping hole that exists in almost every Canadian history text (where Aboriginal people are talked about at the beginning, usually in terms of the Bering Strait theory or the fur trade, but then ignored until modern protests and barricades).

The author combines oral history, written history and archival research to offer details on everything, including the community's role in the early fur trade and the war parties and horse raids of Ahtahkakoop's boyhood, as well as the surrounding issues in the Saskatchewan River country, such as the Metis uprising and the signing of treaties 4 and 5.

Christensen also includes information about buffalo hunting (including the last hunt in 1877), the community's conversion to Christianity, the switch to farming, and schools both off- and on-reserve. These and other details are woven into the book's central concern: at 500 of the total 800-plus pages, the treaty process and the settlement at Sandy Lake takes centre stage.

Unfortunately, there are some problems. Despite the fact that the (female) author spoke with women Elders, there is blatant sexism. Early in the book we are told that "[I]t was the sacred stories told by the old men, passed down from generation to generation, that formed the foundation upon which the children's education was based." With that sentence, the role of old women in a balanced, healthy community is erased. And except for one lone example - and surprisingly, given that Cree is not a gender-based language - helpers and guides are referred to as "Old Man" spirits, as if the natural and spirit worlds are not in balance, comprising both female and male. (One wonders if the community's conversion to Christianity has influenced traditional notions of balance and equity. The Anglican Diocese of Saskatchewan is a big presence in this book.) Finally, although this community traces its history back to a western migration from the Great Lakes, from Ojibway/Midewin roots, other Cree communities have much different origins. But this is not stated, so readers might incorrectly understand the Ahtahkakoop story as the history of all Cree.

These shortcomings do not derail the entire project, however. The wide-ranging nature of the information - the construction of ox carts used in the first geological survey, the dimensions and architecture of the community's first European-style dwellings, the biographies of everyone, including the half-breed treaty interpreters and school teachers, to the community's longtime Indian Agent, gives this book a varied focus that will appeal to readers of every interest.

Ahtahkakoop contains enough bells and whistles to please any historian or teacher: more than 100 pages of notes, a selected bibliography, a complete index, a glossary of people, a guide to Cree pronunciation, the first band treaty pay list, and the complete text of Treaty 6. But it also defines words throughout the text (such as "catechist" and "Union Jack") so students can follow along. There are texts of speeches, maps, archival photos an original art, including the pencil drawings of gifted artist Ed Peekeekoot of the Ahtahkakoop First Nation.

The book's detail is never boring. Rather, it allows readers to understand the massive change that colonization brought to Native communities, and it shows that instead of buckling under the force of that change, Aboriginal people met it with intelligence and ingenuity.

Although suitable for the general reader, Ahtahkakoop will also prove a useful resource for schools, teachers, researchers, and students of Canadian and Aboriginal history. It's an informative and engaging read.