Oral History

ACFN Elder Leonard Flett (30 April 2021)

In this discussion, ACFN Elder Leonard Flett described an interaction with Parks Canada in the 1990s. Leonard deliberately entered the Park and practiced his right to fish there in hopes of being arrested and charged, to initiate legal proceedings and thereby demonstrate and establish his rights to harvest in the Park in court. While he was ticketed and took the case to court, it was ultimately dropped.

LF: I was robbed. Yeah, highway robbery, I guess. Everything. Our culture and the land. We were there and stuff, right? And took years and years till I put my foot back in [the] national park. I kind of disagreed with it. I fought it back in the ’90s for ice fishing so I can practice my right. I was charged by the National Park and went as far as the court door, didn’t go anywhere else.

PF: They dropped the charges?

LF: Yeah.

PF: Or, they still charged you?

LF: Yup, they took my chisel away, they took my fishing rods, whatever else I had there. I went walking out there [to where I fished]. I didn’t take my skidoo or anything. Cause I [knew] that was a challenge I took. My mother was very, very upset for me to go out there and that’s the kind of guy I am, I guess. I want challenges.

PF: Can you take me back to that time when you were deciding—what made you decide that you wanted to go back to the Park?

LF: I just wanted to practice my rights, my hunting rights, my fishing rights, a lot I had before, right? I even called [the] national park, I told them I was going at a certain time and they met me out there while I was fishing, yeah.

PF: And so, was part of it you wanted to reconnect kind of with your past too?

LF: Yeah. I’m entitled to.

PF: And so, what did the parks guys have to say when they picked you up?

LF: They didn’t say much. They just gave me a ticket and they offered a ride back to town. And I said, no, I’ll walk. I came walking out here, I walk back to town.

PF: What did you think about on that walk?

LF: It’s good, it was a challenge. It was. I defeated the national park.

PF: And then, I guess you got your tickets? So you’re getting ready for court and stuff. What were other people, like your mom was upset, but what were other people thinking?

LF: My mom was very upset. Cause, anybody [who] violated the Park way back in the day they’re probably jailed, right?

PF: So she thought that was gonna happen to you?

LF: Yeah. But I stood my ground. And I have people from Northwest Territories that were challenging [the] national park [WBNP] for their hunting rights. Like the Métis Association of Alberta. And I called them up and told them, and they backed me up and said, “go ahead, do it.” And then when are you going to resolve it?

PF: And so, what about people in your community, were they backing you up too?

LF: There aren’t much people involved, and I just involved my mother, that’s pretty well it. And I got a hold of Indian Association out of Treaty 8, they got me a lawyer and stuff like that. So, I went to court. It didn’t go anywhere.

PF: So you were getting ready to go to court. And then what happened? They just told you it was dropped?

LF: Yeah, it was dropped right at the court door that day. Yeah.

PF: Did they say why?

LF: No.

PF: What do you think?

LF: I think they were defeated. I don’t think they had a chance. I don’t think they had a chance, you know? And that’s the reason why I took it [this cause] up. I took journalism before, so.

PF: Okay. Did you ever write anything about it?

LF: Uh, no, I haven’t. One of these days, I will.

PF: Okay. Yeah, it sounds like it’d be a good story. So have you gone back since?

LF: Yeah, I built a cabin in the national park. I gave it to my son. There’s other memberships that have built cabins in the park. My sister and her husband used to live in Peace Point, used to teach in Peace Point which is the national park back in the ’80s. So we maintain our rights, I guess.

PF: How do you feel about having the cabin now and having been able to pass it on to your kids and, or your son and stuff?

LF: Feeling proud.

John H. Marcel (30 April 2021)

John was explaining to the interviewer that he often used to visit the Park and called it home, sometimes hunting there to assert his rights to the territory taken up by the Park. He suggested that sometimes when he does so, he gets resistance from some MCFN members who are permitted by Park policy to call the Park home.

I like going there [to the Park], but I don’t. It seems like I’m not welcome in that place. And then I just bug them sometimes. I get this little thing that where—the hell with the way you feel—my granny was born up that way [at] Birch River. My granny is the one—she was born up that way. My granny and my other grandfather, her side was from that way so that they’d all come to the Park after, eh? But in a way, that’s why, when I go there, I always say, hey, I’m coming back home, I always bug a Cree member. But them, they don’t get what I’m saying. I never told them why I’m saying that, like, “hey, I feel like I’m happy I’m getting home, the way home, you know?” I’m just fooling around with them.

But, when you get there, you get, “what is this guy doing here?” Just like about that time when I’m saying I’m going back home, we stopped in a cabin, right about this time of the year [in the Spring], with a lot of birds going north, that’s what we’re going for. It was in the Park right by Lake Mamawi, and when I stopped there, I know everybody, they’re all from here, Fort Chip, but they all look at me, “what the hell is this guy doing here?” Right? You know, I know right away, just by the look of it. But I didn’t care . . . it doesn’t bother me, if they think that way, to hell with them, it’s no longer my land. I just laugh at them. That’s all I do. I’m only there to hunt, right? I’m not there to go put a cabin right next door to you, so I’m there for two hours or a few days, then I go home. And I’m probably going to do that not too long from now, the next couple of weeks you know, exercise our right. I might go for a cruise [a boat ride] up that way and bring my little tent and stove and what I need. Talk about [how] I’m going to go for when the birds come in, eh? Yeah, go for a little hunt there.

Pat Marcel (2013)

The following is an extensive excerpt from Pat Marcel’s oral history about negotiations for ACFN’s reserves and the 1935 provincial Order-in-Council 298-35 setting aside an additional preserve north of the 27th Baseline to further protect the rights of those Dene individuals without access to the Park. In 2013, he shared this history with Arlene Seegerts, a researcher who, at the time, was working with Pat to record his family oral histories about Treaty 8 and the 1935 Order-in-Council. Pat’s grandfather was Chief Jonas Laviolette, who, along with his brother Alexandre Laviolette and son-in-law Benjamin Marcel, Pat’s father, was instrumental in negotiating the establishment of this preserve.

The story that I am about to recall [is] about Chief Jonas Laviolette, in negotiations for reserve land. Reserves like 201A to 201G.³⁵ When the government proposed these reserves, Chief Alexandre Laviolette saw immediately that the land was too small for ACFN to survive on. Negotiations continued, not only for N22, but also for a bigger area in Alberta, where we could practice Treaty Rights and use the land for conservation, because the land around the Delta was being invaded by people who had no regard for fur bearing animals, and the moose and other big game animals that the Chipewyan survived on.

When Chief Alexandre Laviolette first started negotiation for protected land, this was the outcome, in 1935. When most of the negotiation for land started, he knew that most of the better lands [outside the Park] would be taken up. . . . He wanted to make sure that there would always be game and fur-bearing animals because he was already preaching conservation, back then. The Chiefs, starting with Alexandre, always had an interest in the future, in order to survive off the land in fifty or one hundred years. He did not see ACFN surviving on agriculture. He did not see ACFN surviving on commercial fishing, as seen by McGinnis [fishery] bringing in their own people to fish, not ACFN.³⁶ So that is why he wanted to protect land for the sole use of ACFN into the future.

These negotiations went on and were picked up by Chief Jonas Laviolette, after his brother [Alexandre] died, and he and my dad, Benjamin Marcel [a Chipewyan Band leader , were able to negotiate with the province with the help of the federal government. It was through legislation with the Alberta government that this land was set aside for ACFN to practise our Treaty Rights and conservation. And [it] was set up as [a] huge tract of land, right up to the Northwest Territories. . . . This land, they talked about for many years. They [Dene Elders] called, time and time again, the importance of keeping this land, and to be sure that we would never lose this land for as long as ACFN needs the land to practise our Treaty Rights and conservation.

The Chief knew in those days—he was a very wise man—[that] what he puts in place with the Alberta government has to go right into the future, so we will always have a place where we can hunt. For the conservation, so we will always have game. This is what the Chief talked about all the time with my Dad. They had already signed the agreement, that legislative agreement. That was three years before I was born. And as I grew up, right until I was sixteen or seventeen, I trapped with my Dad, in the very same area, and he described this very same land. And he was very adamant: “You can never lose this land.” That we must hang onto this—“forever.”

I have not forgotten what my dad put into my head, and what Chief Jonas Laviolette used to come over and talk to my dad about; that that [1935] Agreement was an achievement for ACFN to practise Treaty Rights and also for conservation. I am sure that Chief Jonas Laviolette convinced the government that if we didn’t have that agreement, then the white population would run rampant and kill everything off, and we would not have anything to survive. So this is what happened with the 27th Baseline and our land. And I tell the people, “Do you think it is coincidence that all of our traplines [RFMAs—the means whereby the province has managed trapping activities outside reserves since 1942] end on the 27th Baseline, but not outside of this land?” The traplines all ended on the 27th Baseline.

I heard Chief Laviolette speak about how we must not let Alberta Game take our land. He was looking at Reserve #201 to #201G, that those lands, called “the reserves,” are so small that we could not survive off it. So this land [under the 1935 Order-in-Council] has been set aside by the Alberta government, by an Order-in-Council, by the Games Act, which was [the] first time at the agricultural side, but was put into the Games Act for enforcement.

In 1935, an Order-in-Council was passed by the Province setting aside the area in the Fort Chipewyan district, north of a line beginning at the south-east corner of Buffalo Park running directly east to the Saskatchewan border. This area is for the exclusive use of the Indians and settlers living north of the above-mentioned line and no trapping licenses have been issued to outsiders for that area since that time.

The Alberta government was not doing this—giving us land—from the goodness of their hearts. They were doing that because they knew that they had disrupted all family life at House Lake, by removing us from the park. So when we were given this piece of land to practise our Treaty Rights on, it was for us to pass the test of time—for our use—that Chief Jonas Laviolette made sure that this land would be able to be there for us. To pass the test of time. It would still be there for one hundred or two hundred years into the future. That there would be somebody to speak for it, and that the government would support ACFN, to have this land that was set aside.

The fact that Chief Jonas Laviolette and my dad would always go back and talk about this land was to make sure that the future generation knew about it. And that we could still pressure the Alberta government, to make sure that this land was always there for us, for our use. Chief Jonas Laviolette was my grandfather, and he would come to my house and talk to my father and tell him, “That knowledge cannot be lost.”

Edouard Trippe de Roche (25 November 2021)

Edouard Trippe de Roche described the establishment of reserves promised in Treaty 8. He suggested that, although the 201 reserves were important for protecting Dene rights as other areas in the territory were being taken up, the reserve allotments came together without the knowledge or consent of many of the Dene residents and land users. He concluded that ACFN’s experience with unsatisfactory reserve allotments was not an isolated event—referring to the similar experiences of Blackfoot Nations in southern Alberta.

When the Dene were kicked out [of] the Park, the government gave us, or gave the Dene, a piece of land over here. We didn’t have a choice on where we wanted to be, you know. They put us over here by Jackfish Lake, Old Fort, and up the river a couple of other places. And there’s high water—we’re losing so many acres. Even these last floods here, just this summer. Now, if you want to call land, land, you can’t call our reserve there across the lake, 201, “land,” because it’s all under water, so we didn’t actually have a reserve. So, I was telling the Chief we should pick some reserves or a piece of land or lands somewhere where we want to live, not where they want us to live. I know down south they’ve given the Blackfoots, they put them all in rocky hills, you know, rolling hills. They have places, sure they have small places to farm but not like where they were kicked out of the prairie. That’s what happened out west here. So that’s just one of my points.

Anonymous ACFN members (2021)

1. I think as you go along, you might find some—not just cautionary tales, but things that I would call passive aggressive. People going hunting bison outside the Park and then inviting everybody outside the Park for two days while you eat the bison and have a really great time. And I’ve done it, I didn’t shoot bison, but I’ve gone to the feast, and I had a great time. Everybody just crowds around—oh maybe I shouldn’t say this, sorry—they crowd around the fire, and you know, tell tales and stuff like that and everybody just eats. But this is something, feasting is something that has always been there and it’s a thing that people love to do. But they don’t shoot inside the Park because of course the Park wardens, if they found out, would kick everybody out. And I think you’ll find among the [Dene] there’s been some very, very strong passive aggressive actions taken. Because you just can’t live without resistance.

2. Yeah, I did hunt buffalo and buffalos used to come out from the Park, eh? But you can’t go and hunt in the Park. But sometimes people they go in and get themselves a buffalo or two in the park too, well, in a bad storm. Well, you got to survive somehow, you know. You’ll starve yourself. [They] tell you, “you can’t go and shoot this buffalo in that Park” and what else is there to eat? And they had to poach buffalo out in the bush and then try to hide it. Everything they can hide, to survive. That was wrong, you know? That they’d [Parks officials] do that to other people.

Yeah, you keep it from the rangers, fish and wildlife. They [Indigenous harvesters] don’t squeal on one another either. Somebody gets a caribou, everybody gets a piece of it. They help one another feed themselves. That was really good. Those were the good happy old days in one way. Oh, yeah, they help one another as much as they can for survival, to try to survive. Can’t see a person starve to death, you know?

But Native People survive on the land. They had to do what they had to do to survive and sometimes they don’t follow the white man’s law. They can’t, otherwise they’ll starve their family. They go and poach too, we did. But still, we used to go and hunt. You had to survive. We had no choice.

3. I will tell you what I used to do, I mean, whether you bring it out [in the government report] or not doesn’t make any darn difference—it’s all gone now. But I—there was about three or four of us on a boat. We’d wait till Parks get to Chip and they’re back [until the wardens have left the park], and they bring all their boats off. Well, I noticed about six o’clock, seven o’clock they’re all in. And then we go out and hunt the buffaloes. Yeah. Oh, my God, I think I better darn keep quiet here. Shit, all of a sudden, the Parks, you come here one night, and they lay charges on me for all the information I’ve given you guys.

4. I shouldn’t say that they never ever, ever come into the Park. There’s a few of the guys went in just to go poaching—waterfowl.

5. Well, I think of one story my grandpa told me where they waited right till about dark. They knew where the buffalos are there, and then they took all the meat and they worked all night. . . . They cut all the meat up and stored it all over the place and even the buffalo they say, they took a [musk]rat house away and then put the buffalo into the rat house and covered it back up. Covered all their tracks and stuff to make sure there’s nothing. They had the meat. I think they hid it from the dogs or they’d hide some meat for themselves and stuff. But they made sure it was all hidden. Or they made dried meat right away, you know, dried meat can be stored easily in a cabin and stuff. Yeah, they were kind of scared back in the day. But they did it, they poached them.

6. I’ll tell you a little story. I used to live with my partner at the time. And they, well me too, I like eating buffalo meat, eh? We’re not supposed to kill them, but my partner had killed one and then it just happened that the Chief at that time there, he came there with the Park wardens. They come to visit and so when they came there, in here, I was boiling a big pot of buffalo ribs and some moose meat. They asked me what it was, and I told the Chief, I said, “you should know it’s moose meat,” I told him, “have some.” “Okay,” he said. He just smiled and looked at me, big smile on his face ‘cause he knew what it was. The Park warden, I invited him. I said, “have some moose with us.” He said, “oh it tastes so good” and all that. He was eating buffalo meat, he didn’t even know the difference.

Yeah, they went to an Elder’s [house] here in Chip one time, because somebody reported he had shot a buffalo [in the Park]. And then, well, he did but already he had packaged the meat and put it in the bottom [of the freezer] and he had some moose meat and he put it on top. So by the time the Park came over there, Park wardens came there, they wanted to check his deep freeze. So the Elder opened the deep freeze, said, “okay, go ahead,” he said. There’s moose meat there and you could see outside there, like part of the moose, like the bones and stuff like that, he hadn’t gotten rid of yet. So Parks said, “oh, okay, we just had to check.” And he said, “I know not to kill buffalo,” he said. Closes his deep freeze and he left, but at the bottom was all the buffalo meat. So yeah, they don’t know—these people.

ST: And what would happen if they did get caught?

Elder: They’d get charged, you’re not supposed to, I guess. I don’t know what they did now, but you’re not supposed to kill buffalo. Yeah, because you’re not supposed to kill it in the park because it’s considered endangered or whatever they say. But you know, if they come this way towards Alberta, we’re gonna go, not me, but you know, the guys are gonna head out there. Yeah, it tastes good that buffalo meat.

7. I mentioned earlier my father was sixty-one when he perished, and he left thirteen in our family and for sustenance purposes—my mother didn’t have any advanced education, and it was difficult. So, I had uncles who would harvest a buffalo or a moose, but most of the time it was buffalo. We weren’t allowed to, but they did anyway, and they would provide for my mother who was their sister, and they would bring food, which would be buffalo and fish and that sort of thing.

And in the summers, I know that on one occasion, and I’ll never forget it, we went into the Park. I had an older brother that was going to get a buffalo in the Park because we needed meat. So away we went, and he dropped me at a place called Salt Plains which was west of Fort Smith. It was in the Park, and in order to get in there, there was a couple cabins near a place called Salt River and we had to sneak around those cabins with the vehicle so they wouldn’t hear us or see the lights or turn us in.

So we went and we got into the salt flats and he gave me a pot and something else, and he dropped me off, and he said, “when you see me flash the lights you start coming towards the lights and make lots of noise, okay?” So I did that. What I was doing was pushing buffalo to him and then he’d turn the lights on, and “bang, bang,” and we had a buffalo. So, then we would carve it up and load it up and get out of there. But that was in the Park.

So, I would daresay, we weren’t the only ones doing that. I mean he must’ve learned it from somebody else too. But most of it was for subsistence reasons. That was our meat. That’s how I grew up.

8. I mean, you know there’s been cases over the years where people hunt bison or they hunt geese. Even when I was younger to go hunting in the Park, we knew it was illegal, we knew it was illegal, but it was where all the birds were. It was where the migratory route was—was in the Park. So you know you risk being criminally charged from the federal government through the warden services for doing activities like that.