Red Pheasant Chief Clint Wuttunee holds former Chief Red Pheasant's Treaty Medal that was returned to the First Nation. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown and Tyler Marr

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‘You have your heart back:’ Chief Red Pheasant’s Treaty Medal returns home

Jul 4, 2019 | 3:16 PM

Amidst the sound of beating drums, song and dance, a Chief Red Pheasant’s Treaty Medal finally came home to rest at Cree Nation that bears his name after 134 years.

“It was very emotional and surreal… to think about what that Treaty meant to Chief Red Pheasant back in 1876,” Chief Clint Wuttunee said upon first seeing the medal.

He described the repatriation as a good sign for the future, a type of “reset” for Indigenous people’s relationship with Canada.

On Wednesday, the Treaty Medal was symbolically reunited with Chief Red Pheasant at his gravesite in a private ceremony.

The Medal was given to him in 1876 when Treaty 6 was signed, but in 1885 it is said it was removed from his body by an Indian Agent who attended his funeral. It was later sold to a merchant in England. The Hudson’s Bay Company acquired it in around 1952.

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In 2002, the Manitoba Museum noticed the medal in a collection it received in a donation from 1994 as part of the Hudson’s Bay Company Museum Collection. It discerned from the history of the medal that it belonged to Red Pheasant and considered it for a repatriation gesture. In 2018, Red Pheasant formally made a request to have the medal returned.

Red Pheasant displayed the medal during its Treaty Days powwow event on Wednesday and Thursday and will send it to the Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Centre in Saskatoon to be displayed beginning July 8.

Chief Red Pheasant had wished to share the medal with the community.

Chief Clint Wuttunee holds former Chief Red Pheasant’s Treaty Medal that was returned to the First Nation. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

During the ceremony, Mary Culbertson from the Office of the Treaty Commissioner (OTC) was moved to tears.

“Congratulations, you have got your heart back,” she said.

Former Red Pheasant Chief Craig Wuttunee said the return of the medal has a profound impact on the community.

“It means a great deal to us,” he said. “It could be the same kind of feeling of a decorated war veteran, and those medals go missing.”

Wuttunee said future plans are in store for Red Pheasant to develop its own heritage and cultural site, similar to Poundmaker First Nation’s, so it can permanently display the Treaty Medal as well as other items reflecting the history of the community and its people.

Robert-Falcon Ouellette described the return of the medal as an opportunity to move forward in reconciliation and focus on the future.

“It offers a moment for people to look at the past and contemplate that history,” he said. “It is an opportunity for reconciliation that people often don’t think about.”

Ouellette is not only the Liberal MP who represents the riding of Winnipeg Centre, where the Treaty Medal was previously housed at the Manitoba Museum, but is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. He was proud to return home alongside the medal.

Treaty Medals, he said, are symbolic of a relationship about working together and the repatriation highlights parts of Canada’s history — both the difficulties and hopes and dreams of Indigenous people.

Chief Red Pheasant, he said, had dreams about what his decedents would be able to accomplish. He hopes the repatriation acts as a call to young people to work harder for a better future.

“Moving forward should look like successful children, good educations systems, fulfilling what the dream of Chief Red Pheasant was; to see his people be successful in the Western world but also in the Indigenous world,” Ouellette said.

Indigenous youth should not see themselves as prisoners of the past without the agency or ability to control the future, he said. And while they need to respond to and understand the past, he said once the mistakes are remedied, it is time to move forward.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca, tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow, @JournoMarr