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My research seeks to uncover narratives of Indigenous-Ukrainian relations in east central Alberta and bring Indigenous people and Ukrainian Canadians together to open dialogues surrounding their shared histories.
The Stories of These Lands: Recovering Indigenous-Ukrainian Relations in East Central Alberta
The Stories of These Lands: Recovering Indigenous-Ukrainian Relations in East Central Alberta
East central Alberta is home to many descendants of Ukrainian immigrants who arrived beginning in 1891. When they arrived, many relied upon the knowledges of Cree, Métis, and other Indigenous people who had been living in relation with these lands for countless generations.
In November 1899, the Yureichuks left Edmonton for their new homestead near Smoky Lake via the North Saskatchewan River. It was much colder than they could have imagined, and their raft became stuck in the ice. Nearly frozen and desperate for help, an Indigenous family came to their rescue and saved them from certain death.1
This narrative is typical of early Ukrainian settlers who encountered Indigenous people when they began arriving in East Central Alberta in 1891. Ukrainian settlers told stories of the kindness they experienced from Indigenous people and expressed sympathy as they too faced severe discrimination from white Canadian society.
However, as Canada’s acknowledgment of the essential role of Ukrainians in settling the prairies grew, discrimination waned and by the 1970s, they came to be fully accepted as part of white Canadian society.
The processes that legitimatized this transformation shaped a mythology grounded in the hardships faced by early settlers in harsh empty lands; the consequence of which erased Indigenous people from their histories. Ukrainians came to see themselves as the first true occupants of these lands.
These revisionist histories are the stories of my ancestors.
1 Piniuta, Harry. Land of Pain, Land of Promise : First Person Accounts by Ukrainian Pioneers 1891-1914. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1978.
My research seeks to recover narratives of Indigenous – Ukrainian relations in East Central Alberta. I will show that by selectively including and excluding Indigenous peoples in their narratives, Ukrainian-Canadians have operationalized what Aileen Moreton-Robinson identifies as the “white possessive” to craft a socio-political and ethno-cultural identity that supplants Indigenous Sovereignty.
Research generously supported by:
Research generously supported by:
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