Tsuu T'ina

1877

When the Tsuu T’ina signed Treaty Seven in 1877, the government urged them to share a reserve with the Siksika. As soon as the buffalo disappeared two years later, however, they decided against sharing land with their allies. In the winter of 1879-80 the Tsuu T'ina camped near Fort Calgary and worked at the Fish Creek farm – a creation of the Indian Department south of Calgary. Two years later, upon chief Bull Head’s urgings, the government allotted the Tsuu T’ina three townships of land along Fish Creek, southwest of the town. Until the disappearance of the buffalo, the Tsuu T’inna had contributed to Calgary’s economic development by trading buffalo robes with the Hudson’s Bay Company, I. G. Baker Company, and T. C. Power. Once the buffalo disappeared, however, they became impoverished. The government forced them to remain on their reserve if they wished to receive rations.

^{Source: The Applied Research History Group, University of Calgary.http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/calgary/aborcalgary.html}

2004

Despite being life-long neighbours, the Tsuu T'ina Nation and the City of Calgary are still relative strangers. For most Calgarians, the Tsuu T'ina reserve is a blank spot both on the map and in the mind -- it's a place where the city's record-setting urban growth hits a wall, and essential commuter roads come to a dead end.

Few Calgarians take time to think of the Nation next door as a separate community with it's [sic] own government, citizens and concerns -- or what it's like to watch a massive metropolis swallow the horizon.

"The Tsuu T'ina turn around, and say, 'We used to look at open prairie,'” said Dr. Patricia Wood, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Ontario's York University.

"Calgary's sprawl surrounds them on three sides, and is always visible at night because of the lights -- imagine what that feels like."

[Now] the enormous city. . .[is] desperately seeking permission to carve a major city highway through Tsuu T'ina property.

The fact that Calgary, in 2004, wants a favour from its Aboriginal neighbours is almost as big a stretch as the distance the city covered in so few years.

It was a short time ago that Aboriginals were banned from many Calgary establishments, and treated with contempt, unless it was Stampede time, in which case they were seen as a novelty to photograph and stare at. . . .

Calgary tends to pay attention to its neighbour only when it needs something -- the highway through the reserve being the latest example -- and otherwise ignores it.

^{Source: Platt, Michael. “Getting to Know Each Other a Struggle; Urban Sprawl Surrounds Reserve.” Calgary Sun. Feb. 24, 2004, AN2. Copyright 2004 Sun Media Corporation.}