| People | Iroquois / Cree / Métis people |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Calihoo, Alberta |
| Province | Alberta |
| Land | |
| Reserve(s) | none
|
| (1998) | |
| Website | |
| michelfirstnation | |
The Michel Band is an Indigenous nation of central Alberta, Canada, which the Government of Canada recognized as a nation and treaty partner from 1878 to 1958. The descendants of that historic band, now organized as an association called the Michel First Nation, are engaged in legal and political action to regain recognition.
The Michel Band was also referred to as the Michel Caillehoo, Michel Caillehouis, Michel Caillehow, Michel Calihoo, Michel Calistrois, or Michel Calliho Band,[1] referring to the name of their chief at the time that they signed Treaty 6 with the Canadian Crown by adhesion on September 3, 1878.
In 1880, a 40-square-mile (100 km2) Indian reserve was surveyed as "Michel I.R. 132" on the Sturgeon River, about 8 miles (13 km) from the Roman Catholic mission at St. Albert, northwest of Edmonton near the present-day town site of Villeneuve. The reserve was described and surveyed in September 1880 by G.A. Simpsona as "to a post on the right bank of the Sturgeon River and thence easterly along the said bank of the river to the point of beginning, containing an area of forty square miles more or less."[2] and formalized by Order in Council PC 1151 on May 17, 1889.
Like all First Nations in the Edmonton area, the Michel Band members came under government and settler pressure to surrender their agricultural land. Land sales marked by government corruption steadily eroded their land base through the next half-century.[citation needed] In 1959 the entire band was "enfranchised"—removed from status as Indians in exchange for the right to vote in Canadian elections and removal from the strictures of the Indian Act on March 31, 1958,[clarification needed] by Order in Council P.C. 375. The Michel Band was the only one in Canada to be enfranchised during the twentieth century.[3]
The people of the modern-day Michel First Nation have ancestry primarily from the Iroquois, Cree and Métis ethnic groups. An Iroquois (Mohawk) man by the name of Louis Callihoo, born in 1782, came west in 1800 to work for the Northwest Company, spawning a large group of descendants, many of which live in Alberta today. In 1998, there were over 700 registered descendants.[3]
- ^ "Index of Bands in Western Canada - Western Canada - Bands and Agencies - Library and Archives Canada". collectionscanada.lgc.ca. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
- ^ MacPherson, Elizabeth (1998). The Sun Traveller. St.Albert, Alberta: Musée Héritage Museum. p. 56.
- ^ a b Macpherson, Elizabeth (1998). The Sun Traveller. St.Albert, Alberta: Musée Héritage Museum. p. 6.