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This month in Sunday Shorts, we feature two profiles from Cora Voyageur’s book, My Heroes Have Always Been Indians: A Century of Great Indigenous Albertans (2018), reprinted here with permission of the publisher, Brush Education.

Alexander Wuttunee Decoteau
1887–1917
Cree
Olympian, Police Officer, and Soldier
Alexander “Alex” Decoteau was one of Alberta’s first Olympians and was the first Indigenous person to become a member of a municipal police force in Canada. He was a celebrated long-distance runner and represented Canada in the 1912 Olympic Games. He died serving in World War I during the Second Battle of Passchendaele.
Alex was born on the Red Pheasant Reserve on November 19, 1887, near Battleford, Saskatchewan. His father, Peter Decoteau, was one of Poundmaker’s warriors at the Battle of Cutknife in 1885. When his father died in 1891, Alex and his brother Peter attended the Battleford Industrial School in Saskatchewan. Later, Alex moved to Edmonton to live with his sister, Emily Latta, and her husband, David, who was an Irish-born veteran of the North West Mounted Police.
Alex’s athletic career began in earnest in 1909. That year, he won six races, including the Cross Cup in Calgary. In fact, he won the Cross Cup five times in six years, and the cup was awarded to him permanently after his fifth victory. During the provincial championships held in Lethbridge on July 1, 1910, Alex won all four of the events he entered. He also won the coveted Calgary Herald Christmas Road Race in 1910, 1914, and 1915. Again, he was presented with the trophy permanently. In 1912, Alex easily qualified for the Olympics and became the only Albertan on the Canadian team that travelled to Stockholm, Sweden. He qualified for the 5,000-metre final, but he developed leg cramps and could not finish.
Decoteau also had a distinguished career with the Edmonton Police. He became one of the first motorcycle police officers in Canada and was assigned to lock the High Level Bridge every night. In 1914, Alex was promoted to sergeant, again the first Indigenous Canadian to hold this rank.
Alex resigned from the police in 1916 to enlist in the war effort. He entered as a private in the 49th Battalion of the Alberta Regiment of the Canadian Infantry. Still finding time to run, Decoteau participated in two races while stationed in England. He won the first and was presented with King George V’s own pocket watch because the trophy did not arrive in time. When he entered a race the following day, he arrived to find it was a bicycle race, so he borrowed a bicycle and went on to win the race.
Decoteau was sent to the front in 1917 and was killed by a German sniper’s bullet on October 30, 1917, at age 29. He was buried in Flanders Field at Ypres, Belgium, but in 1985, a special ceremony was held to bring home his spirit.
Alex Decoteau was inducted into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame in 1967, the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Pioneer’s Award by the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.
Profile by Lee Tunstall

Olive Patricia Dickason
1920–2011
Métis
Journalist, Historian, and Professor Emerita
The Métis have always stood with one foot in both worlds, straddling the cultural divide. Knowing this, it seems most fitting that a Manitoba-born Métis woman would build bridges of understanding between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people of Canada, as well as between the young and old. As an indefatigable and youthful spirit, the acclaimed historian and academic Olive Dickason managed to rewrite Canadian history while battling against institutional ageism. In fact, her efforts in bridging both cultures and generations within Canada were, and continue to be, remarkable in reshaping the attitudes of Canadians.
Dickason was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1920 to a Métis mother, Phoebe Cote, and an English father, Frank Williamson. Dickason’s background is as varied as her career path. As a child, Dickason began her studies in an Oblate convent. During the Great Depression, Olive’s mother fed the family using her “bush survival skills” after her father lost his banking job. It was also Olive’s mother who persuaded her to continue her studies through correspondence. This encouragement would eventually lead to a university degree for Dickason.
For the next 24 years, Dickason worked as a journalist at various prominent newspapers, including the Globe and Mail. An increasing awareness of her mixed heritage spurred Dickason to return to university and study history. Christopher Moore wrote that Dickason’s penchant for rewriting Canadian history was sparked by her indignation at textbooks that cast Indigenous people in a secondary role to the so-called “discoverers of Canada” and, more insultingly, as “savages.” Her decision to pursue a graduate degree in Native Canadian History was questioned since “the University [of Ottawa] in those days doubted that aboriginal history was real history.” Determined to give voice to her Indigenous heritage, Dickason graduated with a doctorate and the right to teach the seldom-heard Indigenous side of Canadian history. But her battles had just begun.
In 1985, the University of Alberta informed the then 65-year-old Dickason that she was obliged to retire under the terms of her contract. Dickason replied, “I was just getting started.” She took the northern institution to court under the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms. By the time a ruling was reached seven years later, in 1992, she was ready to retire of her own accord.
Dickason took the historical establishment to task using her powerful arsenal of words. Some of her more notable writings include The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas and the highly acclaimed Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times. Interestingly, her proudest moment came when she was awarded the National Aboriginal Lifetime Achievement Award (now Indspire) in 1997, although she had already been appointed to the esteemed Order of Canada in 1996. Dickason’s commitment to the truth initiated a genuine dialogue between the Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people of Canada—taking that first step together toward real understanding. Olive Dickason was a hero to many. She passed away at the age of 90 in Ottawa in 2011.
Profile by Yvonne Pratt
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Dr. Cora J. Voyageur is a full professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Calgary, where she has taught for 20 years. Her research interests explore the Indigenous experience in Canada, including leadership, community and economic development, women’s issues, and health. She is a residential school survivor and a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation from northern Alberta.
Cora J. Voyageur 
Published: Nov 14, 2018 by Brush Education
ISBN: 9781550597547
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