Joseph Dion

 2 July 1888 - 21 December 1960

Joseph Dion was born on 2 July 1888 near Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, to Augustine and Marie Dion, members of the Kehiwin Indian band, whose reserve is near Bonnyville, Alberta (McCardle 2008). He had two siblings Mary Therese and Toussant as well as four others who passed away from diphtheria. Dion was a descendant of Big Bear, a Plains Cree chief who is best known for refusing to sign Treaty 6 and for his involvement in conflicts associated with the North-West Rebellion (Pannekoek 2006). As a child, Dion attended day school on his reserve. This was only for a short while as the school was lost in a fire; he was then transferred to the Onion Lake residential school, a Roman Catholic institution. The children were given numbers to identify them: “They gave me number 7 as my brand, so I was one of the very first”, Dion wrote (Shattering the Silence).

Dion clearly remembers the staff who worked at the school, reflecting that they were very hard workers and Brother Vermet, the priest in charge of the dormitory, was strict but never abusive. He has happy memories of his nine years spent at the school marred only by the persistence of illness and death among his classmates, primarily from tuberculosis. Dion graduated from the school at the age of 15 with a grade 8 education. He completed his grade nine by correspondence which qualified him to pursue teaching later on. Due to this religious education Dion became a devout Catholic, which is reflected in his writing and later on in his religious work in his parish and other surrounding areas (Dion vi). Dion married Elizabeth Cunningham in 1912 and a few years later he opened the first school on the Kehiwin reserve where he taught for 24 years (Dion v). Dion and his wife lived on a farm by Long Lake where they raised their children. Elizabeth was often left alone while Dion travelled and she sold cream to finance his travels and yearly pilgrimages to Mount St. Joseph (scribd.com).
In the 1930s Dion became concerned about the poverty of the Métis people who had been displaced and lived in very poor conditions, and he sought to champion their cause. He was instrumental in forming the organization that would become the Métis Association of Alberta. Dion supported the League of Indians of Western Canada as well and was part
of the movement that formed the Indian Association of Alberta (Dion vi). He held key positions in both organizations for most of his life and often travelled between colonies and reserves attending meetings. Dion was mindful of presenting a positive image to the public in order to promote good relations and formed a Métis dance troupe in the 1930s in order to dispel any negative stereotypes about Indigenous people (Dion vi).

Dion had always been exposed to the oral traditions of his people; his parents and other elders had told him stories of the Riel Resistance including the incident at Frog Lake and the Battle at Frenchman’s Butte. Dion’s interest in Cree and Métis history was given new life when he began to research traditional dances. He had already begun writing as early as 1912 “and some of [his] manuscripts [had] turned yellow with age” (Dion x). Dion observed that a lot had been written about “western Indians [by] white historians” and “these writers have been carried away with themselves and mixed fiction with truth” (Dion ix). He decided to write a book in the 1950s, tentatively titled History of the Cree Indian in Western Canada, and some of this was published in instalments in the Bonnyville Tribune.

Dion worked on the manuscript periodically over the years but it was not completed at the time of his death, on 21 December 1960, at St. Louis Hospital in Bonnyville. After his death his widow arranged for all of his papers and writings to be placed in the Glenbow Museums archives. It was from these that his book My Tribe the Crees was compiled and published in 1979, edited by Hugh A. Dempsey (Dion vii).

Works Cited:
Barkwell, Lawrence. “Dion, Joseph Francis (b. 1888).” Scribd, https://www.scribd.com/document/35420958/Dion-Joseph-Francis-b-1888.

Dion, Joseph. My Tribe, the Crees. Glenbow Museum, 1979.

Joseph Francis Dion Métis Association of Alberta, The Canadian Aboriginal Issues Database, https://sites.ualberta.ca/~walld/dion.html.

“Joseph Francis Dion.” geni_family_tree, 8 Dec. 2017, https://www.geni.com/people/Joseph-Dion/6000000038706521297.

McCardle, Bennett. “Joseph Francis Dion.” The Canadian
Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joseph-francis-dion/.

Pannekoek, Frits. “Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear).” The Canadian
Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/big-bear/.

Shattering the Silence, http://www2.uregina.ca/education/saskindianresidentialschools/joseph-
dion/.

Other Sources:
Scanned documents/correspondence/photos of Joseph Dion: Joseph Francis Dion, http://www.glenbow.org/collections/search/findingAids/archhtm/dion.cfm.
Obituary: http://www.elkpointhistory.ca/beginnings/regionalhistories/kehewin/dion-
family-history/jf-dion

Additional Resources:

For a historical analysis, citing Dion, of Métis community members and their dealing with colonial barriers and oppression, see:

Poitras Pratt, Yvonne. “Resisting symbolic violence: Métis community engagement in lifelong learning.” International Journal of Lifelong Education, vol. 40, no. 4, 4 July 2021, pp. 382–394, https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2021.1958017.

Dion appears in the following passage:
Of interest, Sawchuk (1998) asserts that in the early years, the ‘main thrust of the [Métis Association of Alberta] . . . was assimilationist and it was dominated by various White values’ (p. 53). He attributes this disconcerting focus to the influence of Joseph Dion who was a devout Catholic yet he also acknowledges the substantial influence of Malcolm Norris and Jim Brady who were both influenced by the school of thought known as socialism (p. 53). This early organisation would experience many fluctuations in its overall aims but can rightly claim the establishment of the
only land base set aside for the Métis across Canada, in the form of Métis
settlements, as one of their primary achievements. (Pratt 389)

For a dissertion by a Métis scholar about the effects of illness and infectious disease on the Métis, see:
Maud, Velvet. “Health of the Prairie Metis 1900-1960: An Examination of the Social Determinants of Health and Infectious Disease.” Health of the Prairie Metis 1900-1960: An Examination of the Social Determinants of Health and Infectious Disease, University of Manitoba, 2021.
http://hdl.handle.net/1993/35904

Dion appears:
Many were concerned about people becoming dependent on the welfare system, particularly the government and taxpayers. In Alberta, one Metis leader, Joseph Dion, founder and organizer of the Metis Association of Alberta was concerned about what would happen if they became reliant on social assistance. He felt a different approach was needed… to create a system whereby they would be able to be self-sufficient and, in times of hardship, collect welfare, would have been more effective than restricting hunting and issuing monthly welfare cheques. (Maud 66)

Joseph Dion entry by Kimberley John in September 2018 and updated in April 2019. Kimberley is an alumnus of SFU, graduating with a Double Major in Health Sciences and Indigenous Studies. She worked as a research assistant for The People and the Text from 2016 to 2020.

Additional Resources collected by Eli Davidovici in April 2024. Eli is an alumnus of McGill University, graduating with an M.Mus. in Jazz Performance in Summer 2024.

Please contact Deanna Reder at dhr@sfu.ca regarding any comments or corrections at dhr@sfu.ca.