Edward Ahenakew
Seven of the students enrolled in the 1910-11 academic year had been born in Saskatchewan. Among them was Edward Ahenakew, to the best of our knowledge the first, and for the next two years the only, Aboriginal student at the University.
The son of Baptiste Ahenakew and Ellen Ermine Skin, Edward Ahenakew was born at Sandy Lake in 1885. His early schooling was at the Atahkakohp Day School; but in 1896, when he was 11, his father took his to boarding school in Prince Albert. “I shed no tear, but the pain in my heart was great, as I watched my father walking away. He did not look back once. I was much depressed....Then two who were my cousins ran over and took charge of me. They had been in the school for more than a year, and they told me about it....”
A successful student and good athlete, Ahenakew graduated in 1903, and worked for some years prior to going to Wycliffe College, Toronto, to study theology. He returned to Saskatchewan, enrolling in Emmanuel College. He graduated and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1912. He also earned a Licentiate of Theology. “I was the first student [from Emmanuel College] to receive it,” he later noted, “but only because my initial began with the letter ‘A’.”
The suffering during the 1918 ‘flu epidemic was extraordinary: working on the Onion Lake Reserve, Ahenekew said “the church was piled high with bodies. On the reserves so many people were dying that mass funerals and burials were being held.”[1] The need for better on-reserve medical assistance inspired Edward to enrol in Medicine at the University of Alberta, but without financial assistance “his poverty led to malnutrition”[2] and such severe ill health he had to leave his studies after three years. Nevertheless, he felt “the years were not wasted, for what knowledge I gained has come in handy from time to time. I think also that my outlook on things has been widened, and my association with the medical students was of value.”
In addition to his work in communities across Saskatchewan, Edward was involved with the Indian League of Canada, and published a monthly newsletter in Cree and English; and he collaborated in the publication of a Cree-English dictionary. Emmanuel College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity. Nevertheless, perhaps the best summation of his life and career came from Doug Cuthand, who observed that “Edward Ahenakew was the first in a series of political and spiritual leaders who worked within the church to help their people on a broad level....Edward Ahenakew was our Martin Luther King.”[3]
Reverend Canon Edward Ahenakew, D.D. died in 1961. Voices of the Plains Cree, written by Ahenakew, was published posthumously in 1974.
