page_title: Deer Lake First Nation
section_title: History in the reserve era
hierarchical_section_title: Deer Lake First Nation / History in the reserve era
caption_attribution_description: Image of Robert Fiddler, signer of Treaty 5 for Deer Lake East Ontario Canada
context_page_description: Deer Lake First Nation is an Oji-Cree First Nations band government in Northern Ontario, located north of Red Lake, Ontario Canada. It is one of the few First Nations in Ontario to have signed Treaty 5. It is part of the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Council and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. As of December, 2007, the First Nation had 1,072 registered members, of which their on-reserve population was 868.
  Deer Lake is policed by the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, an Aboriginal-based service.
context_section_description: In 1910, Robert Fiddler, the son of Jack, signed Treaty 5 at the east end of Deer Lake, and the Deer Lake First Nation began its formal relationship with the Government of Canada and the British Crown. The Fiddlers and many others soon left for better farming lands at Sandy Lake and others still went to settle at North Spirit Lake, and the only members of the "Deer Lake Band" still living at Deer Lake were the Meekis, Rae, and Quill families. The population of the entire band at all three locations at this time was 78 individuals, but this number grew with an influx of newcomers from Island Lake in Manitoba and numbered over 300 in 1929. It was that year that commissioners representing the Government of Ontario (the province of Ontario had absorbed the area from the District of Keewatin in 1912), determined that the Sandy Lake settlement was actually in the territories covered in the adhesions to the James Bay Treaty (Treaty 9), and created a reserve for the Deer Lake Band at Sandy Lake Narrows ignoring the fact that a significant portion of the band still resided at Deer Lake and had yet to have a reserve formally designated under the terms of the 1910 treaty.
  As the 20th century progressed the people of Deer Lake came more and more into contact with the outside. Cree missionaries brought Methodism and Anglicanism, and local people led by Adam Fiddler built and maintained churches. As Jack Fiddler foretold in a vision, airplanes came and took children away to residential schools. An HBC post with a store and post office was established, and Canadians Oscar and Jeanette Lindokken established a nursing station. In this period, the people of Deer Lake were largely denied their sovereign rights and became a colonized people. In some ways, traditional structures and cultural practices broke down, while in other ways they were maintained or modified.
  In 1985, the Deer Lake First Nation formally split from the Sandy Lake First Nation with each achieving full band status. The two reserves maintain close relations, however, given the shared history and amount of family connections.
caption: Robert Fiddler, chief of Deer and Sandy Lake Bands at time of treaties.
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