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 Kehewin Indian band, whose reserve is near Bonnyville, Alberta (McCardle 2008). Although his family’s band ties were with Kehewin in what is now Alberta, Dion’s birthplace near Onion Lake reflects the mobility and kin networks of the period. He had two siblings, Mary Therese and Toussant, as well as four others who died from diphtheria. Dion was a descendant of Big Bear, the Plains Cree chief 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, but only briefly. After the school was lost in a fire, he was transferred to the Onion Lake residential school, a Roman Catholic institution. At the school, children were assigned 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 remembered the staff at Onion Lake as hardworking and recalled Brother Vermet, the priest in charge of the dormitory, as strict but not abusive. He described mostly happy memories of his nine years at the school, though these were shadowed by persistent illness and death among his classmates, primarily from tuberculosis. Dion graduated at age fifteen with a Grade 8 education and later completed Grade 9 by correspondence, which qualified him to pursue teaching. This religious education also shaped his devotion to Catholicism, reflected in his writing and in later religious work in his parish and surrounding areas (Dion vi).

Dion married Elizabeth Cunningham in 1912. A few years later, he helped establish one of the early schools on the Kehewin reserve, where he taught for twenty-four years (Dion v). He and his wife lived on a farm near Long Lake where they raised their children. While Dion travelled frequently for community, political, and religious commitments, Elizabeth often carried the responsibilities of home and farm life and helped sustain the family through these long absences, selling cream to finance his travels and yearly pilgrimages to Mount St. Joseph.

In the 1930s, Dion became increasingly concerned about the poverty of Métis people who had been displaced and were living in difficult conditions. He sought to champion their cause and was instrumental in forming the organization that would become the Métis Association of Alberta. Dion also supported the League of Indians of Western Canada and participated in the movement that formed the Indian Association of Alberta (Dion vi). He held key roles in these organizations for most of his life and regularly travelled between colonies and reserves to attend meetings. Mindful of public perception and committed to strengthening relations with non-Indigenous communities, he formed a Métis dance troupe in the 1930s to counter negative stereotypes about Indigenous peoples (Dion vi). It was in this work that Dion bridged Cree and Métis advocacy, weaving education, political organizing, and cultural representation into a long-term strategy of public and community-facing leadership.

Dion had long been immersed in the oral traditions of his people. His parents and other elders shared stories of the Riel Resistance, including the incident at Frog Lake and the Battle of Frenchman’s Butte. His interest in Cree and Métis history was renewed and deepened through research into traditional dances. He had been writing as early as 1912, noting later that “some of [his] manuscripts [had] turned yellow with age” (Dion x). Dion observed that much had been written about “western Indians” by white historians, and that these writers had “mixed fiction with truth” (Dion ix). In response, he began a book in the 1950s, tentatively titled History of the Cree Indian in Western Canada, portions of which were published in instalments in the Bonnyville Tribune.

Dion worked on the manuscript intermittently over the following years, but it remained unfinished at the time of his death on 21 December 1960 at St. Louis Hospital in Bonnyville. After his death, his widow arranged for his papers and writings to be deposited in the Glenbow Museum archives. Drawing on these materials, 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 dealings 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 dissertation 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.

Updated by Kayla MacInnis in November 2025. Kayla is an MA student in English Literature at Simon Fraser University and a research assistant with The People and the Text.

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