Remains reburied in final resting place

On October 18th, 2014, the remains of 28 people from the Sharphead reservation were laid to rest after they were exhumed nearly 50 years earlier and held in storage at the University of Alberta.

A wake was held the day before at the Howard Buffalo Memorial Centre on the Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis. The Government of Alberta, the University of Alberta, and 14 First Nation communities with direct descendants from the Sharphead band, worked together to repatriate and rebury the remains. Their new permanent final resting place is located within the borders of the Sharphead reserve, near Ponoka.

In 1965, Calgary Power (now known as TransAlta) discovered an abandoned cemetery during the installation of power poles on the former site of the Sharphead reserve. The University of Alberta’s anthropology department excavated the site, removed the remains, and stored them until it was possible to return them to their descendants.

The Sharphead band’s history is tragic. Formed in 1876 after the signing of Treaty 6, the band’s population was decimated by multiple epidemics of smallpox, measles and influenza. The remaining people that survived left the reserve and relocated to neighboring First Nation communities. The reserve was officially surrendered in 1897.