END NOTES
1. F.R. Scott, “Laurentian Shield.”
[return to text]2. Freedman, Russell. Buffalo Hunt. New York: Holiday House, 1988.
[return to text]3. Woodcock, George. Gabriel Dumont. Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1976, p. 425.
[return to text]4. Zinovich, Jordan, Gabriel Dumont in Paris: A Novel History. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1999, p. 61.
[return to text]5. Barkwell, Lawrence. Ed. La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin. The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis. Volume 1: Language Practice. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 2004. (Wintering camps have been identified as one of the social structures under which the language Michif developed), p. 8.
[return to text]6. Howard, Joseph. Strange Empire: Louis Riel and the Metis People. Toronto: James, Lewis & Samuel, 1952.
[return to text]7. Wiebe, Rudy. River of Stone: Fictions and Memories. Toronto: Vintage Books Canada, 1995.
[return to text]8. Howard. p. 117.
[return to text]9. Gabriel Dumont Memoirs, edited and annotated by Denis Combet, translation by Lise Gaboury-Diallo. Saint Boniface, Manitoba: Les Editions Du Ble, 2006, p. 105.
[return to text]10. Howard. p. 55.
[return to text]11. Ibid. p. 56.
[return to text]12. Ibid.
[return to text]13. Ibid.
[return to text]14. Ibid. p. 41.
[return to text]15. Savage, Candace. Bird Brains. Vancouver: Greystone Books/Douglas & McIntyre, 1995.
[return to text]16. The poem’s subject, Elizabeth Brass Donald, Cree/Salteaux, was born 1836, a member of the Key Reserve signed under Treaty 4 located in southwestern Saskatchewan. At age seventeen, she married George Donald, Métis HBC carpenter and blacksmith and raised eleven children. Later she became a member of the Papaschase Band, but extinguished her Indian status by taking Métis Scrip in July 1885 likely under duress of starvation. Edmonton Pentimento: Re-Reading History in the Case of Papaschase Cree, Dwayne Trevor Donald.
In two surviving photographs of Elizabeth Brass Donald (Betsy Brass), she is diminutive, with rounded shoulders, and wears a dress of crisp black fabric and a black shawl. In one photograph she stands defiant in front of Frank Oliver’s house, the owner of The Bulletin, Alberta’s first newspaper that advocated the Papaschase Band “be sent back to the country they originally came from.” R.S. Maurice, Statement of Claim: The Papaschase Indian Band No. 136., Pimohtewin: A Native Studies E-Journal, October 2, 2001.
[return to text]17. Frank Oliver, the founder and editor of Alberta’s first newspaper, The Bulletin, was opposed to the establishment of the Papaschase Reserve in what is now South Edmonton, and he was amongst a vociferous group of Edmontonians who adopted this attitude. They argued that the Reserve would impede the growth and development of the town and deny the settlers access to valuable resources and fertile land.
[return to text]18. The line “when it all went wrong” is a derivation of “Where it went wrong.” As Neil McLeod explains, “This is the English translation of the Cree word e-mayikamikahk which refers to the tragic events of the so-called Northwest Resistance of 1885.” Edmonton Pentimento: Re-Reading History in the Case of Papaschase Cree, Dwayne Trevor Donald. See also Neil McLeod, “Nehiyawinwin and Modernity” in P. Douaud and B. Dawson (Eds), Plain speaking: Essays on aboriginal peoples & the prairie (pp. 35–53). Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre.
[return to text]19. Ibid.
[return to text]20. Bird, Elizabeth, S. Buffalo Bill, and Sitting Bull. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 28 no. 2, 145–7. www.sscnet.ucla.edu/indian.
[return to text]21. Combet, Denis, Ed. Gabriel Dumont: Memoirs. Trans. Lise Gaboury-Diallo. Saint-Boniface: Les Éditions du Blé, 2006.
[return to text]22. Howard. p. 362.
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