Acknowledgements

The experiences of the relatives and Ancestors of the Dënesųłıné and of the living and deceased members of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), are the heartbeat of Remembering our Relations. This book happened because grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents passed down, from generation to generation, their oral histories and testimony about what happened in the history of Wood Buffalo National Park. We wish first and foremost to honour their sharing, bear witness to their suffering, and recall and lift up their strength, resistance, and love. The book starts and finishes with their words and memories. We are deeply grateful to the many who shared their stories and passed on their belief in justice and healing.

A work like this one depends on the knowledge, time, and care of so many people. This book is dedicated to the late ACFN Elders Alec Bruno and Pat Marcel, who worked tirelessly throughout their lives and leadership to draw attention to the history of the Wood Buffalo National Park (WBNP). Their efforts to expose the violence of WBNP and lift up the voices of Dene people who experienced that violence were catalysts for this research project. Chief Allan Adam’s Foreword to Remembering Our Relations pays tribute to his grandmother Helene Piche-Bruno and her son (Chief Allan’s father), the late Alec Bruno. A Preface from Elder Alice Rigney, a sister of Elder Pat Marcel and granddaughter of Ester Piche. Chief Allan and Elder Alice have provided an eloquent tribute that is far more meaningful than our own attempts to describe the importance of Pat’s and Alec’s work could ever be.

Many ACFN members and staff played central roles in the production of this book and in the research that preceded it. As will be described later in the book, the work began with a research project starting in 2019, which resulted in a report released in 2021, titled A History of Wood Buffalo National Park’s Relations with the Dënesųłıné. The intention of the report research was to document the history of the Park and its harmful intergenerational impacts on ACFN, in order to inform negotiations for a formal federal apology and reparations. Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation established a community steering committee before the research for the original 2021 report began. Members of this committee played invaluable roles throughout all stages of this work and put a lot of time and energy into the research report and the book. Committee members were involved, for example, in planning and conceiving the project and work early on, working out to navigate the research process throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, overseeing the work, engaging with the larger community regularly, reviewing and revising drafts, and developing the manuscript and in so many other ways. The committee developed the research plan and questions that guided the work starting in 2019 and made sure the project proceeded with the community’s goals, concerns, and intentions at its heart. The late Pat Marcel, Brian Fung, Rose Ross, Jay Telegdi, Lisa Tssessaze, Olivia Villebrun, Leslie Wiltzen, staff at Counsel Public Affairs, Inc., and Larry Innes at Olthuis Kleer Townshend Law, worked tirelessly since the research report project began in 2019. At the time, Elder Pat Marcel was the lead and chair of the committee and lead negotiator with the Government of Canada. His passing in late 2020 was a heartbreaking loss for all of us as well as for the wider community. Elder Pat’s nephew Leslie Wiltzen took over Pat’s roles thereafter. We are thankful for both Elder Pat’s and Leslie’s guidance and leadership.

Lisa Tssessaze’s suggestion that we do something beyond the original report to honour and centre the voices of the Elders and their oral histories led to the idea for this book. Lisa, Jay Telegdi, and Rose Ross have also been leaders throughout the process. Their immense commitments of time, creativity, and work must be highlighted. They ensured that the work proceeded on the community’s terms and timeline, and under their guidance. Lisa, Jay, and Rose organized and led meetings; facilitated ongoing communications with ACFN members and Elders, Chief and Council, and the wider community; ensured protocol was correctly upheld throughout the process; wrote and edited biographies; reviewed and revised drafts of the original report and manuscript chapters; obtained permissions from every person who shared oral testimony or from next-of-kin for those who since have passed; provided critical feedback; and asked important questions. The list goes on. Thank you so much for everything.

The project team are thankful as well to ACFN leadership, including both the Elders’ Council and Chief and Council, whose contributions and feedback kept the project alive. Engaged as he has been with many so other important issues outside of the WBNP research project, Chief Allan Adam graciously shared time, knowledge, energy, and stories.

We are grateful to Elders Alice Rigney, Edouard Trippe de Roche and Keltie Paul for reviewing the manuscript as the members of the ACFN Elders’ review panel in early 2022 while it simultaneously underwent University of Calgary (UCalgary) Press’ academic peer review. Alice, Ed, and Keltie shared so much valuable feedback — not only during this review, but throughout the life of the project. Ed and Keltie also provided us with one of the first reviews of the original report. We are grateful as well to other ACFN members and Elders who reviewed sections of the manuscript and provided revisions to their interview transcriptions and excerpts, including Jimmy Deranger, Kristi Deranger, Dora Flett, Garry Flett, Lorraine Hoffman, Hazel Mercredi, Julie Mercredi, and Leslie Wiltzen. Many ACFN Elders also shared feedback on project updates at several Elders’ Gatherings in Fort Chipewyan.

Thank you also to Josh Holden and ACFN Elder Cecilia Adam who wrote the Dënesųłıné chapter titles for this book. They also provided important instruction on the Dene language and spellings for this book. We are grateful for the work of ACFN member Angela Marcel, who scheduled interviews and meetings with Elders and members in early 2021 for the original report. Thank you also to ACFN Elder Leonard Flett for sharing his stunning watercolour for the cover design of this book, which was the winning submission for ACFN’s book cover image contest that took place in 2022.

Heartfelt thanks to Tara Joly, who while working for Willow Springs Strategic Solutions (Willow Springs) became the lead researcher on this project when Willow Springs became involved in 2019. Alongside Sabina Trimble and Peter Fortna, several members of the Willow Springs team worked on various parts of this book. We are grateful to Emily Boak and Michael Robson for producing the GIS maps. Thanks so much to Julia Schwindt for proofreading and assisting in many other capacities to pull everything together at the end. Thank you to Jasmine Trimble for the transcriptions of many of the interviews that took place between 2020 and 2021.

We are so grateful for the detailed and thoughtful feedback from two anonymous reviewers, and from Alan MacEachern, the editor for the Canadian History & Environment Series at the University of Calgary (UCalgary) Press. Our team has been incredibly lucky to work with copyeditor Rhonda Kronyk, who is a member of Tsay Keh Dene First Nation, a founding member of the Indigenous Editors Association, and a member of the Indigenous Editors’ Circle. Rhonda’s exceptional work as an editor on the manuscript, sensitive approach to the oral history sections, and strong commitment to centering the community’s voices and intentions cannot be overstated. We are so thankful for the energy, time, and thoughtfulness she brought to the work. Thank you!

Thank you also to Helen Hajnoczky at UCalgary Press, who believed in this project. Your graciousness, encouragement, and patience throughout the publication process kept us going! We’re so lucky to have worked with you. Deep thanks as well to Brian Scrivener, Alison Cobra, and Melina Cusano at UCalgary Press, who facilitated the project with their energy.

The prior work of several academic researchers provided a critical foundation, especially for the introductory sections of each chapter. We discuss the literature that has influenced us in the Introduction, but we also wanted to take some space here to highlight the important contributions of Patricia McCormack, John Sandlos, Ave Dersch, Theresa Ferguson, Henry Lewis, and Tara Joly to our understandings of the history of Wood Buffalo National Park and the surrounding region. Their work helped us to focus our own and assisted with navigating the expansive, often overwhelming, archive of information that has been recorded and collected in the 100 years of this national park’s history. A quick glance at the endnotes will make evident the importance of their intellectual groundwork. We are thankful as well to historian John Wall from Parks Canada, staff at Library and Archives Canada and the Provincial Archives of Alberta, and ACFN staff who manage the community’s record collection for their facilitation and helpful assistance as we gathered archive sources. LAC staff also digitized thousands of pages of archival material for us when public health restrictions barred us from physically going to the archives.

Finally, and most importantly, we wish to honour the work and contributions of every ACFN member and Elder, both living and passed, as well as their Dene, nehiyaw, and Métis kin and neighbours. Your oral histories and testimony are the foundation of this story and form the core of every chapter of the book. One paragraph of acknowledgement seems so insufficient — but here it is. Thank you for sharing with us, for advancing this work, for making this book happen. You are the reason Remembering Our Relations (and the research that preceded it) exist, and the reason for any good that comes of it. We hope that that this book does justice to what you have shared.

To everyone, mahsi cho.