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“The whole portrayal of what happened during the Northwest Resistance, or rebellion, was one in which the government painted First Nations as if they were supporters of Riel and the Métis,” Stonechild said. “The whole thing was just a total fabrication. And it’s been proven to be so.”

Poundmaker’s case, especially, stands out for the Cree as an injustice. He was convicted in part for his role in the Battle of Cut Knife Hill, a bloody confrontation Stonechild and his co-author Bill Waiser depicted in their 1997 book, Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion, as a colossal screw-up by a disobedient Canadian soldier spoiling for a fight.

Photo by National Archives of Canada

The Cree weren’t the aggressors that day, Waiser said. “They were attacked and so they counter-attacked.” In fact, things would have been much worse for the Canadian had Poundmaker not intervened. “He was a peacemaker,” said Tootoosis. “He was a diplomat.”

Like many points of Canadian history, the background to the battle was one of confusion, racism and broken promises. In the winter of 1884 and into 1885, Cree leaders in what are now the Prairie provinces had begun to gather, upset with the Canadian government’s failure to live up to the terms of the numbered treaties.

That movement coincided with Riel’s second rebellion, however, and in the minds of government officials, newspapermen and local settlers the two became conflated into a single, dangerous uprising.

In reality, First Nations involvement in Riel’s rebellion “tended to be limited and sporadic,” Waiser said. The First Nations didn’t want a fight. Faced with the collapse of the buffalo population and in many cases impending starvation, what they wanted what was owed them by treaty: rations, help transitioning to an agricultural economy and land.