The Paul First Nation, more commonly known as the Paul Band, is a
First Nations
First Nations or first peoples may refer to:
* Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area.
Indigenous groups
*First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including:
**First Natio ...
band government
In Canada, an Indian band or band (french: bande indienne, link=no), sometimes referred to as a First Nation band (french: bande de la Première Nation, link=no) or simply a First Nation, is the basic unit of government for those peoples subjec ...
based in
Wabamun, Alberta
Wabamun is a hamlet in central Alberta, Canada within Parkland County. It is approximately west of Edmonton on Highway 16. It held village status prior to 2021.
History
Wabamun was named for its location on the north shore of Lake Wabamun. T ...
of mixed
Cree
The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...
and
Nakoda (Stoney)
The Nakoda (also known as Stoney or ) are an Indigenous people in Western Canada and, originally, the United States.
They used to inhabit large parts of what is now Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana, but their reserves are now located in Albe ...
origin. They are party to
Treaty Six
Treaty 6 is the sixth of the numbered treaties that were signed by the Canadian Crown and various First Nations between 1871 and 1877. It is one of a total of 11 numbered treaties signed between the Canadian Crown and First Nations. Specifica ...
and had the
Buck Lake Indian Reserve 133C and
Wabamun Lake Indian Reserve 133A,
133B and 133C allocated to them by the federal government in 1892. However, the Buck Lake Reserve was decimated by the
Spanish Flu of 1918 and is now largely abandoned.
As of 2005, the nation had 1,926 members, of which 1,110 lived on-reserve.
Paul Band's Wabamun 133A and 133B lands are located along
Lake Wabumun, approximately west of
Edmonton
Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...
. The lake is a popular destination for Alberta to spend weekends and holidays, and the band operates the Ironhead Golf and Country Club to appeal to this market.
In April 2010, there was a devastating costly wildfire that caused community members to flee.
Demographics
The Paul Band signed a treaty in 1876 and settled on the eastern edge of Lake Wabamun. While the total population of the Paul Band was 1397, 856 individuals were living on the Paul Band Reserve in 1996.
By 1998 there were 1,400 members of the Paul First Nation. The majority were
Stoney and the remainder Cree.
In Alberta the Nakoda were known as Stoney. They were also grouped by the Cree term
Assiniboine
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...
. They all speak common
Siouan language
Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
Name
Authors who call the entire ...
but according to Bird, "there are differences in dialects spoken between the groups in Alberta and also between those in Alberta and those in Saskatchewan and Montana."
History
![Their Majesties greet chieftains of the Stoney Indian Tribe, who have brought a photo of Queen Victoria](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Their_Majesties_greet_chieftains_of_the_Stoney_Indian_Tribe%2C_who_have_brought_a_photo_of_Queen_Victoria.jpg)
The Stoney are descendants of individual bands of
Dakota
Dakota may refer to:
* Dakota people, a sub-tribe of the Sioux
** Dakota language, their language
Dakota may also refer to:
Places United States
* Dakota, Georgia, an unincorporated community
* Dakota, Illinois, a town
* Dakota, Minnesota, a ...
,
Lakota
Lakota may refer to:
*Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes
*Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples
Place names
In the United States:
*Lakota, Iowa
*Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County
*Lakota ...
and
Nakota
Nakota (or Nakoda or Nakona) is the endonym used by those ''Assiniboine'' Indigenous people in the US, and by the Stoney People, in Canada.
The Assiniboine branched off from the Great Sioux Nation (aka the ''Oceti Sakowin'') long ago and moved f ...
, in particular of western groups of
Assiniboine
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...
, from which they spun out as an independent group at about 1744. The Stoney were divided geographically and culturally into two tribal groups or divisions with different dialects, which in turn were further divided into several bands.
Of all the Siouan speaking groups, the Paul Band and the Alexis Band were the farthest north and west. In her thesis Ruby Bird, daughter of then Chief Bird, summarized Andersen's three possibilities regarding the Paul and Alexis' Bands in pre-treaty times,
By 1880, about a half of the Alexis Band led by Ironhead separated and were living at Wabamun Lake where the land and fishing was better than the lands assigned to the Alexis band as a reserve when they signed Treaty Six in 1876.
The chief of the Alexis Band was Catholic and was not tolerant of other religions. The Wabamum Lake band were Protestant.
By 1892, the federal government realized the two bands, the Alexis and the Wabamun Lake band had irreconcilable differences and therefore created a second reserve for the Paul Band settled at White Whale Lake. The reserve name was changed to Wabamun Lake Indian Reserve. Paul Band was named after the head man at the time. According to government documents, Paul's brother Ironhead, had led them to Wabamun Lake, but Ironhead died before the reserve was officially founded. The reserve was called Wabamun Lake Indian Reserve and the Band was called Paul Band. Eventually the popular name for the reserve became Paul Band.
Wabamun Lake
Ironhead had moved his band to Wabamun Lake by 1880 because the fishing was good there. There are rolling aspen hills and good land surrounding the lake.
Starting around 1850, the mission at Lac Ste. Anne began fishing nearby lakes to provide fish to customers in Edmonton.
By 2003, the lake was described as one of the most heavily used lakes in Alberta by limnologist
David Schindler
David William Schindler, , (August 3, 1940 – March 4, 2021) was an American/Canadian limnologist. He held the Killam Memorial Chair and was Professor of Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, A ...
. It is also one of the most popular recreational lakes in Alberta.
Paul Band First Nation Reserve is on the east end of the lake. There is a village, Wabamun, and a number of summer villages and subdivisions on the lake shore. The Yellowhead Highway and CNR railroad tracks parallel the north shore. There are coal mines north and south of the lake as well as TransAlta's Wabamun (now decommissioned) and Sundance power plants and cooling ponds for the Sundance and Keephills power plants. There is Wabamun Lake Provincial Park at Moonlight Bay and a golf course managed by the Paul Band First Nation Reserve.
Since 1912, Lake Wabamun water levels have been "repeatedly and illegally modified" by "different groups wishing to regulate lake levels at either very high or very low levels."
Twenty two percent of the
catchment basin
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the ...
of Lake Wabamun has been disturbed by two coal mines, the
Highvale, covering 12,600 hectares, the largest coal mine in Canada and the
Whitewood mine Whitewood is a closed Canadian coal mine in Alberta just north of Lake Wabamun, about sixty-five kilometres west of Edmonton, Alberta. Owned by the TransAlta Corporation of Calgary, the mine was run by Luscar Ltd. (Edmonton) since that company ac ...
. Strip mining involves remove overburden to expose the coal seam that is then mined in distinct strips. By 2004, these two mines had disturbed 5,593 ha of the Lake Wabamun catch basin.
The vast majority of the coal burning in Alberta occurs approximately 70 km west of Edmonton, in the Wabumun Lake area.
The
Wabamun Generating Station
Wabamun Generating Station was a coal-fired power station owned by TransAlta, located next to the village of Wabamun, Alberta. The station's primary source of fuel was sub bituminous from the Whitewood mine. Unit 3 was retired in 2002; Units 1 ...
, a
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when dea ...
fired plant owned by
TransAlta
TransAlta Corporation (formerly Calgary Power Company, Ltd.) is an electricity power generator and wholesale marketing company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is a privately owned corporation and its shares are traded publicly. It o ...
, located next to the village of
Wabamun, Alberta
Wabamun is a hamlet in central Alberta, Canada within Parkland County. It is approximately west of Edmonton on Highway 16. It held village status prior to 2021.
History
Wabamun was named for its location on the north shore of Lake Wabamun. T ...
was first commissioned in 1956 and decommissioned in 2010 with the smoke stacks demolished in March 2011. The station's primary source of fuel was sub bituminous from the
Whitewood mine Whitewood is a closed Canadian coal mine in Alberta just north of Lake Wabamun, about sixty-five kilometres west of Edmonton, Alberta. Owned by the TransAlta Corporation of Calgary, the mine was run by Luscar Ltd. (Edmonton) since that company ac ...
.
According to CASA
and cited in David Schindler's 2003 report commissioned by
Alberta Environment the combined emissions of the coal-fired plants in the Wabumun Lake area, emitted,
Although mercury levels in fish for consumption meet guidelines for occasional use, Schindler cautioned that for the Paul Band subsistence consumers some concern remains in the consumption of large
pike
Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to:
Fish
* Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus''
* Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes
* ''Esox'', genus of ...
that exceed mercury levels in Lake Wabamun.
On 3 August 2005 more than of bunker oil and other chemicals spilled into Lake Wabamun when faulty tracks caused 40 rail cars to derail in the Wabumun village.
Two years later there were health cautions still issued, warning users of the Lake to avoid oil patches and tar balls in Lake Wabamun.
Education
In the summer of 1893 the White Whale Lake Methodist Day School
was opened at Paul Band reserve run by the resident Methodist missionary. In the fall of 1893 the Methodist Church began operating the Red Deer Methodist Indian Industrial School.
Paul Band school age children attended the Edmonton Residential School and the St Albert Residential School approximately between the years 1923 and 1950.
Social issues
In an interview with elder Alexie Simon,
published in the 1998 Bird thesis, Simon claimed that Paul Band changed dramatically for the worse after the right to have alcohol on the reserve was granted by the Government of Alberta in 1966.
In 2011, the band faced a $3 million deficit which shut down many social services such as school buses and transportation to medical appointments. In 2011, the band's estimated budget was $14 million. In 2011 they received $8.5 million from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. In 2001, the Band had to take on a co-manager. "Budgets, set at the band level but approved in Ottawa, are formed based on prior year revenues; in years when oil and gas revenues from the band’s Buck Lake property fluctuate, that can affect the flow of funds back to the band from AANDC... Other stressors include a demand for housing and for road repairs, as well as a recent evacuation from wildfires."
See also
*
List of communities in Alberta
The province of Alberta, Canada, is divided into ten types of local governments – urban municipalities (including cities, towns, villages and summer villages), specialized municipalities, rural municipalities (including municipal district ...
*
List of Indian reserves in Alberta
Indian reserves for First Nations in Alberta were established by a series of treaties — Treaty 6, Treaty 7, and Treaty 8.
According to the Government of Alberta reserves cover a total area of . However, according to Indigenous and Northern Aff ...
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
First Nations governments in Alberta
Cree governments
Nakoda (Stoney)