Where this is
I live and work in amiskwaciwâskahikan, the place now called Edmonton. The name is in nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language, and it means Beaver Hills House. There is no settled way to write it in roman letters — the City of Edmonton itself uses more than one — so I picked a spelling and I hold it, rather than mixing forms from page to page.
This is Treaty 6 territory, and it has long been a gathering place and a travelling route for the nêhiyawak (Cree), Dene, Anishinaabe (Saulteaux), Nakota Isga (Nakota Sioux) and Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) peoples. It is within the Métis Nation homeland. It is home to one of the largest communities of Inuit south of the 60th parallel, and to the second-largest urban Indigenous population in the country after Winnipeg — around 87,600 people at the last census.
All of that is present tense. My nearest neighbours are not a historical subject: Enoch Cree Nation sits immediately west of this city, and Alexander, Alexis Nakota Sioux and Paul First Nation are all within an hour of my desk. They are governments, employers and communities operating today, and together with twelve others they make up the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations.
Treaty 6 is an agreement, not a memorial
The treaty was not signed here. It was concluded near Fort Carlton on 23 and 28 August 1876 and near Fort Pitt on 9 September 1876, both in what is now Saskatchewan. The nations of the Fort Edmonton district entered it by adhesion on 21 August 1877, at a ceremony near the river. By the Crown’s own reckoning it covers about 121,000 square miles.
Two of its clauses were not in the Crown’s draft. Cree negotiators put them there at Fort Carlton: a medicine chest kept at the house of each Indian Agent, and relief in the event of famine or pestilence. Within three years the buffalo were effectively gone and people in this district were starving. That sequence is why I won’t describe this as a nice old promise. It is a live instrument, containing obligations that were argued for, written down, and not kept.
The Crown’s text uses the language of surrender. The Indigenous understanding was an agreement to share and to steward. That disagreement is unresolved and it is not mine to resolve. But I won’t call this land unceded. That word belongs to territory never covered by a treaty. This land is covered by one, and the difference matters, because a treaty can be kept or broken and this one was broken.
A reserve on the south side
Chief Papaschase signed that 1877 adhesion at Fort Edmonton. Passpasschase Indian Reserve No. 136 was surveyed from 2 August 1880 on the south side of the North Saskatchewan, inside what is now this city. It did not last a decade. Scrip discharged members from treaty in 1885 and 1886. The remaining members were moved to Enoch in 1887. In 1888 a surrender of nearly forty square miles was obtained from three adult men at a meeting called with four days’ notice, and the land was auctioned off from 1891.
Papaschase descendants allege fraud in all of that. The Supreme Court of Canada ended the case in 2008 on a limitations point, so the merits were never tried. The Assembly of First Nations passed resolutions supporting recognition of the band in December 2018. Canada still has not recognised it. I mention this because it happened on the ground this city is built on, and because it is not finished.
The mark in the footer
The white infinity on a coloured field is the Métis flag. It enters the written record in 1815, carried by Métis forces under Cuthbert Grant, which makes it roughly a century and a half older than the Maple Leaf. Calvin Racette’s Flags of the Métis gives it two readings: the joining of two cultures, and the existence of a people forever. The blue flag is the flag of the Métis Nation; the red is the one carried here in Alberta, and red is why the mark on this site lights the colour it does.
Métis families were here before the city was. They held river lots along the North Saskatchewan and the Sturgeon and built the communities at Lac Ste. Anne and St. Albert. Scrip is how most of that was lost — certificates issued for land or money, in a system so widely exploited that the fraud is a matter of record, and the same instrument that discharged the Papaschase families from treaty.
The present tense: this city sits across the Fort Edmonton and Edmonton Whitemud districts of the Otipemisiwak Métis Government, which replaced the Métis Nation of Alberta in 2023 after a constitution was ratified in a province-wide vote and a self-government agreement was signed with Canada. Otipemisiwak is Cree for the people who own themselves. Alberta is also the only province with a Métis land base — the eight Métis Settlements, governed by the Métis Settlements General Council, which are a separate government from the one that covers this city.
The symbol is not mine. The Métis National Council secured it as an official mark in 2013, precisely so that it stays collectively owned by Métis citizens. So let me be exact about why it is in my footer: it is a pointer, not a badge. This is not a Métis-owned business and it is not Métis-endorsed, and nothing on this site should be read as claiming otherwise. The mark is there to name whose homeland this is, and for no other reason. If the Otipemisiwak Métis Government would rather I didn’t use it, it comes off the site the day they tell me.
Why this is on a design studio’s website
My journal goes back to 2005 and it is largely about roots, heritage and legacy — where things come from, and who made them first. It would be strange to write that for twenty years and stay quiet about the ground the whole archive was made on. That is the honest reason. Not policy, not procurement, not a client asking.
What it changes about the work
- 01
Indigenous names are rendered properly, or not at all.
Real Unicode, correct diacritics, correct
langattributes, and fonts that actually carry the glyphs. Stripping the circumflex off nêhiyaw so a build passes is a bug, and on my projects it gets treated as one. Every site I hand over is checked for it. - 02
Cultural work is a line item, not a favour.
Translation, cultural review, protocol advice, artwork — scoped and paid for at the start of a project, at a proper rate. Never traded for exposure, never bought with a coffee.
- 03
Indigenous art is commissioned, never borrowed.
If a project calls for Indigenous design, an Indigenous artist is hired and credited. I do not reach for motifs, patterns or medicine-wheel colour schemes as decoration, and I talk clients out of it when they ask.
- 04
Data about a community belongs to that community.
If I build something holding data about a First Nation, a Métis district or their members, that community owns it, can see it, and can take it back — the OCAP® principles. That goes in the contract, not the pitch deck.
- 05
This page is dated, not finished.
Written July 2026. I read it again each August, near the anniversary of the 1877 adhesion, and either add what I actually did or admit that I didn’t.
If something here is wrong
Then tell me and I will fix it. I am not from these nations and I am not the right person to have the last word on how they are named — I am the person responsible for what is published on this site, which is a different job. Write to me and I will correct it and say that I did.
And if you are an Indigenous-led organisation in this territory that needs something built, written or fixed, that is a conversation I would like to have properly.
Worth your time more than this page is
The two pieces at the top of this list are the reason this page is written the way it is. Read them instead of re-reading this.
- Beyond territorial acknowledgments
Chelsea Vowel (âpihtawikosisân) — Métis, from Lac Ste. Anne, an hour up the road — on why these are worth very little unless something concrete follows them.
- “I regret it”: Hayden King on writing Ryerson’s territorial acknowledgement
The man who helped write one of the most-copied acknowledgements in the country, on how a well-written script gives people an alibi for skipping the work of learning about their neighbours.
- A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment
Native Governance Center. The practical version — do your homework, name the right people, and do not stop at words.
- Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations
The united political voice of the Treaty 6 nations in Alberta, formed in 1993.
- Otipemisiwak Métis Government
The Métis government within Alberta, self-governing under a constitution ratified by province-wide vote and recognised by Canada in 2023.
- City of Edmonton — Indigenous Relations Office
The city’s own acknowledgement, its Indigenous Framework, and the naming this page follows.
The words on this page
- amiskwaciwâskahikannêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree)
- a-misk-wa-chee-WAAS-ka-hi-kanBeaver Hills House — the Cree name for the place now called Edmonton.
- nêhiyawaknêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree)
- nay-hee-YOW-ukThe Cree people. nêhiyaw is one Cree person — the singular, which is why the plural is the one used above. nêhiyawêwin is the language.
- Nakota IsgaNakota
- na-KOH-tah ee-skaThe people — the City of Edmonton’s term for the Nakota Sioux. The nation nearest here is Alexis Nakota Sioux, west of the city.
- NiitsitapiBlackfoot
- nit-si-TAHP-eeThe Blackfoot people. Literally, the real people.
- Otipemisiwaknêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree)
- oh-tih-peh-mih-SEE-wukThe people who own themselves — a Cree name for the Métis, and since 2023 the name of the Métis government in Alberta.
- MichifMichif
- MIH-chifThe language of the Métis Nation. Not a dialect of anything — it takes its verbs from Cree and its nouns from French.