Ahtahkakoop: The Epic Account of a Plains Cree Head Chief, His People, and Their Struggle for Survival, 1816-1896

Fritz 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.

Ahtahkakoop was a man of incredible wisdom who lead his people, the
Plains Cree of northern Saskatchewan, through what must be the most
catastrophic epoch in Western Canada. He saw the buffalo disappear; he
saw his people’s impoverishment and their freedom swept away. It is
sad that the tale has to be told too often through the eyes of
Europeans, whether Earl Southesk or missionaries like John Hines and
John McDougall. This material is wisely supplemented by the Edward
Ahenakew papers and critical oral histories, but too often Ahtahkakoop
emerges as little more than a thoughtful shadow. Nowhere does the reader
get a real view of the man. He is cloaked with the grandeur of a
mystical figure.

While written by a Euro-Canadian woman, the history is also very much a
history of an aboriginal community and the Ahenakew family. To be
effective and accepted by the community, the book was reviewed by a
committee that included Chief Barry L. Ahenakew and other members of the
family. Possibly as a result, it is very much in the “progressive”
mode—that is, it tends to chronicle success as “agricultural” and
“educational” achievements in the Euro-Canadian world. There are
glimpses of the fight to preserve a culture vigorously threatened by
Christian missionaries and the federal policies of cultural
annihilation. However, in the end it is an appreciative biography of a
great man. All Canadians, regardless of their ancestry, would do well to
read this wonderful story.