By Ryan Missens
Cheyanne Desnomie just successfully defended her master’s thesis in history. I had the privilege of sitting down with her minutes after she was finished. When I asked her about she felt about finishing the defense, she was exhilarated and tired. Her research adds a new perspective and knowledge to history of the File Hills Farm Colony experiment. (FHFC)
William Morris Graham was appointed as the Indian agent to the File Hill and Qu’Appelle Agencies in 1897. One of his most memorable deeds in office and was remembered for was the establishment of the File Hills Farm Colony in 1898. The Colony was an experiment in Indian assimilation where Indian residential and industrial school graduates were selected to be a part of the farm colony project. Graham believed that the farm training received by these graduates from the schools would become successful farmers. The selected graduates assigned to the colony were given more than half of the existing reserve land on Peepeekisis to start the farming colony. Graham also provided seeds and housing materials in order to the start the colony. Graham had hoped that the planned Christian and farming community would expedite the assimilation Indian families into mainstream society.
Cheyanne Desnomie is from Peepeekisis First Nation. She has a vested interest in the subject, after all her research was about her family, community and her ancestors. Cheyanne spent 6 years using oral history from her local elders to learn more about the Farm Colony experiment. According to Cheyanne she had learnt a lot of new knowledge about the failed experiment that wasn’t in the history books and gained an insight from the first nations perspective. Xv
History is open to interpretation according to Desnomie’s research. Oral history has an opportunity to add to written history”. Desnomie says that she had learned a lot about the history of her family and the history of her community in the process. The rigors and standards of indigenous oral history provide another perspective on history. According to Desnomie WM Graham’s Peepeekisis farm colony experiment was a success from the Government of Canada’s point of view. But from the Peepeekisis Elder’s oral history the experiment was a failure that resulted in forced labour, social divide and a changed demographic within the community