This community history chronicles the processes that led to the founding of the Fort McKay Métis Nation in northern Alberta.
This is the definitive history of the Fort McKay Métis Nation. It traces the evolution of the community from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, paying special attention to genealogy, land-use, land-tenure, and responses to mass oil sands development.
The Fort McKay Métis Nation carefully considers the community’s unique historical context, drawing on a broad range of sources including archival research, oral histories, grey literature, and community literature. It examines the complex interrelations between the Fort McKay Metis Nation and their neighbors, the Fort McKay First Nation, and their ways they have connected with each other.
Completed in partnership with the community, The Fort McKay Métis Nation provides perspectives which have never before been shared. It is an important, unique history of a community in the heart of the oil sands.
Proudly presented by LCR Publishing
About the Author
Peter Fortna is a historian based out of Cochrane, Alberta. He has worked with a number of Indigenous communities in western Canada in a variety of capacities authoring reports for regulatory hearings and legal proceedings. He assisted in the authorship of Remembering Our Relations: Dënesųłıné Oral Histories of Wood Buffalo National Park
Introduction: Steps Toward a Fort McKay Métis Community History
1. Early History of the Fort McKay Métis: Origins to 1899
2. Fort McKay, Treaty, Scrip, and the Immediate Aftermath: 1899-1920
3. The Bush Economy and the Registered Trapline System
4. Land Tenure in Fort McKay: “Split Our Very Identity in Two”
5. A Community Turned “Upside Down”: For McKay’s Response to Extractivism
Epilogue: From Community to Nation – the Evolving Relationship between the Métis Nation of Alberta and the Fort McKay Métis Nation
Appendix: The Fort McKay Métis Nation Position Paper on Consultation and Self-Government
