Metis Place - Peace River Country

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Places - Eastern francophone Settlements

Eastern francophone Settlements in Alberta

"Settlement of the Peace River Country

"The opening up and settling of Western Canada was the aim of the
Canadian Government and provided an opportunity for subsistence farmers
in the East [see comment below] to reach for a better life. The federal
government surveyed the Peace Country [1] during 1905-1910. Bishop
Grouard took the new influx of people into his vicariat seriously. He
nominated Fr. Giroux as "Agent de rapatriement et missionaire
colonisateur de la rivière de la Paix". In 1912, after promotion of
migration among farmers in Quebec and the Francophone communities in
the north-eastern United States, Fr. Giroux brought together the first
group of men and women to travel to the Peace River country. They
travelled by train, boat and wagon via Edmonton and Grouard to what is
today Falher [2] -- named after Fr. Falher who was on the journey. The
establishment of communities by groups of people with a similar
cultural background [3] allowed for the development of somewhat
homogeneous communities. Being one-hundred percent Catholic, the
uncontested central role of the Church and the leadership of the clergy
provided a framework for organisation and development of the new
townships."

(Source: PMA Folklife: Fr. Desrochers, p. 5, The Settlement of the
Peace River Country

Notes

Many of the early settlers, like Father Falher himself, were from
France. The peoples from the British Canadian province of Québec and
the north-eastern US, which is unceded Wabanaki Territory, were
Wabanaki and Acadians who had been displaced during the Great Upheaval,
IOW they were francophone Indigenous peoples who who were being pushed
off their homeland in the northeast of Great Turtle Island once again
by the invaders.

[1] Peace River country

[2] Falher AB

[3] Reducing whole Indigenous nations -- which had a nation to nation
treaty relationship with the Crown -- to "cultural communities" is part
of the British Crown (and its corporate successors Canada, Quebec, and
Alberta) agents' policy of genocide by use of linguistics.

Comment

The reference to "subsistence farmers in the East" is to the Indigenous
peoples -- Acadien L'nuk Souriquois, Abenaki Aln8bak, Atikamek
Anishinabek, Innu Montagnais -- some of whom were francophone, living
along the St Lawrence River / Rivière St-Laurent as they had for
millenia. Their subsistence consisted of reliance on careful management
of natural resources (hunting and fishing) in their own homeland,
N'dakina, as well as cultivation of the Iroquoian Three Sisters, Maize,
Beans, Squash, along with some plants that had been introduced by
Europeans, and Indigenous wild plants that were harvested for food and
medicine.

The mission to displace the Indigenous peoples -- most of whom had
refused to accept living on a tiny reserve -- from their homeland
N'dakina in order to steal their lands and resources was likely deemed
necessary due to the long resistance the Native peoples had to letting
surveyors acting in the interest of the British Crown, which was a
violation of various treaties agreed to by the British Crown (e.g. The
Great Peace of 1701, Treaty at Niagara 1764 in which the Seven Nations
became allies, and others), onto their territories.

The plan was two-fold however. Once the Indigenous peoples had been
displaced, they were re-educated, usually in residential schools run by
the Church in the pay of and acting in the interest of the British
Crown, and given a new identity; at first this was a racial identity:
"half-breeds" as the "white supremacist" agents of the British Crown
labelled them, then "French-Canadians", and finally "Franco-Albertans".

This was all in accord with the assimilationist policy and genocidal
agenda of Duncan Campbell Scott and the federal Department of Indian
Affairs, and the plan to make all the "Indians" (Indigenous peoples)
disappear one way or another. (120412 eni)

Metis > Place > Peace River
Page created 14 January, 2010 * Last modified 12 April, 2013 14:10

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