Indian Association of Alberta

The Indian Association of Alberta ( IAA) is an association of Indian tribes in the Canadian province of Alberta. It was founded in 1939 as a spin-off of the League of Indians in Western Canada and held its first meeting on 28 July of the same year.

Indians in Central Alberta, especially members of the Cree and Stoney, founded in 1933, the League of Indians of Alberta (LIA ), to form political organizations, despite the ban of 1927. Your President John Callihoo was one of the driving forces for the formation of the entire province representing IAA. But during the Second World War, it was not possible to include other Indian groups in Alberta. On the contrary, Chris Shade and other groups from the southwest of Alberta established the Blood Indian Local Association. This reflected old antagonisms between Cree and Blood.

A bridge struck James Gladstone, who was adopted from birth a member of the Cree, of the Blood. 1946 emerged two groups of IAA in the Blood, which also sent delegates to the Assembly after Hobbema. At this meeting, Gladstone was appointed because of its balancing effect and its far-reaching plans to the director of the IAA.

Its importance was demonstrated during the presidencies of the Blackfoot and Cree Clarence McHugh Albert Lightning, their opposites in turn could compensate Gladstone during the 1950s. He was president from 1950 to 1953, and from 1956 until 1957.

Main thrust was to secure the rights under the contract (see Numbered Treaties ), and education and assistance against impoverishment. At three other points, however, there was no agreement. This initially involved the lifting of the ban on alcohol for Indians, then the possibility for Indians to lose their status, eventually consisted in the division and individualization of reserves no consensus. Especially the cattle required large, contiguous areas, which generally belonged to the tribe as a whole and thus should not be dismembered.

The finally adopted Indian Act of 1951 continues to ban alcohol, prevented the distribution of land and contained the Indians continue to the electoral law before they could win until 1960. After all, the goal of the Indian legislation was no longer explicitly the extinction of the indigenous cultures. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development still believed the Indians were not ready to take responsibility. But at least the tribal councils were given greater responsibilities.

However, lost in the new version of the Indian Act, some strains, such as 1956, the Samson Cree in Hobbema in Zentralalberta their status as a recognized Indian (status indians ) - if that decision has already been lifted in 1957. Another success was the fact that Gladstone was nominated by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1958 for the Senate.

When in 1969 a multi-year struggle for the special status of Indians began, which should open into the full assimilation and the lifting of the reserves, as they called Jean Chrétien, the IAA 1970, the basic program of Citizens Plus on. A little later distanced the government of Chrétien's demands.

During the constitutional conflict in the early 1980s (see Constitution Act of 1982 ) organized a demonstration in the IAA Edmonton, Alberta's capital, before the Alberta Legislature, attended 6,000 Indians on the. This fight was just as successful as the 1987 to 1990 Meech Lake Accord against.

In addition to these issues of legal integration in the Canadian government, the IAA tried the dissolved residential schools, boarding -type schools where such bad conditions prevailed that the government apologized in 2008, and to address its consequences. At the same should now be more invested in the training and education. Nevertheless, the legal issues dominated the land claims such as those of the Lubicon Lake band, the No. 8 Numbered Treaties was not included in the contract and now threatened, finally losing their land.

In the late 1990s the IAA were removed state subsidies, so that the organization since then has to rely solely on private donations. Yet she continues to work as a lobby group for the rights of Indians in Alberta.