In the north, the three bands which came under Treaty Six all chose reserves in their traditional areas. Alexis' band, with 42 families, took a reserve on the shores of Lac St. Anne, while Paul's band settled on Lake Wabamun. Initially, Sharphead's followers were at Pigeon Lake but when the fisheries failed in 1883, they were induced to take a reserve on Wolf Creek, just south of the present town of Ponoka.

Former Chief Joe Alexis, grandson of Aginas, the first band chief to sign the treaty (on which his name is given in Cree as Alexis- Kees-Kee-Chee-Chee), told me in 1964 that before the treaty the Aginas (Alexis) people were always northwest of the North Saskatchewan River, and wandered in the area of Isle Lake, Lac Ste. Anne and Chip Lake (Anderson 1968: 45).

Download Reserve History (456 KB .pdf file)

The reserve period is the worst part of our lives and still is.  To take freedom away from the native people is like clipping the wings an eagle. The eagle is in its perfect natural state when it’s in the air, free to move and hunt anywhere it wants to, from high above it is able to see far and wide and nothing can touch it. The eagle is totally independent and is close to heaven.

This is how I envision our people living and is not far from the truth according to the oral history from some family’s within our tribe. As I’ve said before the history of some families is different from other tribal members. What the treaties and establishment of the reserves did was to force tribal members together which would otherwise not live with each other. This would lead to many conflicts that the government would ignore as long as they got what they wanted. They even went so far as picking chiefs among these groups creating farther problems. They selected people that would do what they were told. Some clans were still pondering the idea of signing the treaties but were sold out by their own relatives. They were reluctant to sign the treaty but soon saw they really could do nothing so they made the most of what was offered. This has been one of our biggest obstacles to date and while we fight amongst our selves the government is busy taking more of their promises away.

I was told at a very young age about many things of the past and when you look at what has become of our people it’s easy to see why we suffer so much today and no one really cares about us. The Europeans thought they might be rid of us in less than fifty years and many still have that same mentality. They wanted us to be like them and forget our culture. They can’t stand the sight of us a look away as if they have fecal matter in their noses. They stand there acting as if they were superior and look down on us because we have so much trouble accepting their way of living. We have nothing and they have everything. We are homeless on our own land and live in poverty while many are rich from the natural resources taken from our traditional territory. These Europeans have never known freedom and have always had someone leading them. They have always believed that someone will take care of them and their needs as long as they support that someone. In this case that someone is the government and they believe the history this government has weaved for them.

 We are the living evidence of the people they cheated and they hate the fact that we are still here. The term genocide was whispered way back when they thought we might die off quickly. When the smallpox didn’t kill us all off they knew that many would starve to death if they slaughtered the buffalo, and many did. The Buffalo was our home, our clothes, bedding and our food. The Sioux people were a strong and totally independent and that’s why the buffalo were slaughtered. This would take away our way of life and make us dependent on the government.

The government went farther and took away our way of praying and outlawed Sundance’s.

God put us here and blessed us with this part of the Earth. The Earth is a living being as man is and no one has a right to claim ownership to it but the original people of this land. This part of the Earth belongs to the Sioux people just as the Sioux people belong to this part of the Earth. It is a part of a whole creation with no separation of man and Earth. That’s why you hear the old ones say we take care of the Earth and the Earth takes care of us. Those who know of this connection were given ceremonies, songs and special prayers to help the cycle of life continue, we are to live in harmony with all of Gods creation. Everything that God created was put here for a reason and this should be respected. The Sioux nation was blessed with many wonderful gifts and if they had been given a chance to evolve in their natural state mankind would have been here longer than they will be. Many won't understand but some know that the white people are only now accomplishing some of the things native people were able to do many years ago. What native people were doing and the knowledge the holy people possessed could not even be explained with their highest level mathematics, it would make physics look like child’s play. The connection our people had with the Earth extended into the universe. This universal connection has an unlimited source of information that some could tap into but such knowledge would be too much for any single person and our people only took what we needed.   

This is what you lose when you think you are superior and destroy that which you don't understand.  

The reserve period signaled the beginning of the end for our people; we endured many hardships to this point but with our connection to the Earth and our devotion to God we were always able to survive anything that we encountered on this land. We were always given all that we needed. When the Europeans severed our tie to God and the Earth they committed us to a suffering that would never be forgotten. They systematically removed everything that God had given us to live on this Earth and continue to do so even today. We were meant to live in harmony with all of creation and take only what we needed. All that we consumed from the Earth became a part of us therefore lived on in us, we were a part of the Earth and the Earth was a part of us. It truly is from the Earth that we are all created. When we leave the breast of our human mother we turn to mother Earth to nourish our mind, body and spirit. It's through nature that God spoke to us, for God is all of creation. Each and everything is an extension of God therefore we could never join the aliens that came to our land in destroying our way of life. That’s why many of the older people resent having this change forced on us.

The Earth and all that is on it is as much a part of our being as our hearts. To tear out our hearts and cast it aside would mean death. These foreigners could never understand this and did not really care to. We were considered less than human therefore had no rights as such. We were labeled savages and barbarians and under their law they had a right not to recognize us as their equals. They would do what ever it took to subdue us and make this land their own.

We have been done a great injustice by these people yet we have survived and for this we are hated and discriminated against on a daily basis. Even in this day and age it is a constant struggle getting them to keep the promises made in the treaties. Their goal was to assimilate us and have us join them in their way of living. They could never understand that we could not take part destroying that which keeps us alive. To destroy what God gave us to live with was against our nature.

Many years before they came to our land it was foretold that these people would come and forever change our way of life. Many of the predictions the old ones made have come and gone and those that remember know there are other things coming that we will have to face. We were told that we would have to stick together if we were to survive what was coming. Our people have always been able to adapt to change but that which the Europeans brought to this land came upon us so quickly we barely had time to realize what we were facing. They upset the balance that existed here for many generations.