The Indian Association of Alberta: A History of Political Action

Frits Pannekoek is an associate professor of heritage studies, director
of information resources at the University of Calgary, and the author of
A Snug Little Flock: The Social Origins of the Riel Resistance of
1869–70.

Drees’s account of the Indian Association of Alberta (IAA) from the
1930s to the 1970s is a well-researched, carefully reflective history.
It should be read by anyone interested in Aboriginal policy, because of
the central role of IAA leaders in shaping today’s national Aboriginal
agenda. Drees argues that she does not perceive a central thesis or
thread running through the history of the IAA. Because it existed to
respond to local need, its story is one of “disjunction and
discontinuity” rather than purpose.

Yet Drees does present a powerful thesis. She argues that the
Aboriginal peoples involved in its founding had one clear focus: the
treaties must be honored. She further argues that John Laurie, the
Calgary high-school teacher who acted as secretary of the IAA during its
formative years and influenced its political direction for years, wanted
something else: full participation of the Aboriginal peoples in the
economic and social life of Canada. The tension between these two
objectives finally began to be resolved when Laurie retired due to ill
health. Drees argues that Laurie jealously guarded his control over the
IAA, a control that diminished only with his death in 1959. Only then
did the real interests of the Aboriginal peoples emerge.

Drees deftly discusses the internal politics of the association, and
the tensions within Alberta between Cree and Blackfoot leadership and
between the Alberta and Saskatchewan factions. She acknowledges the
importance of Métis leaders and their associations in setting the stage
for the creation of the IAA, but tends to diminish those Albertans who
fought alongside their Aboriginal friends to ensure the end to their
marginalization. Drees’s real hero is Harold Cardinal, whom she
credits with the “modernization” of the association. According to
her, only after that did the treaties emerge as the key issue, which
according to Drees’s well-argued account they always had been.
Drees’s story is, then, its own form of “progressive” or
“whig” history. The modern national agenda is, and legitimately so,
the honoring of the treaties, and she has worked to trace its upstream
origins through a political history of the IAA.