National Post (National Edition)
NHL'S FIRST INDIGENOUS PLAYER
Fred Sasakamoose, a Saskatchewan-raised residential-school survivor who went on to play in the National Hockey League, died Tuesday at age 86 after being hospitalized with COVID-19.
Sasakamoose, born on the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation near Shell Lake, was the first treaty Indian to play in the NHL.
“Fred passed away at 3 o'clock Saskatchewan time,” his son Neil said in a video posted to Facebook. “I just want to thank everyone for everything you've done.”
Sasakamoose suited up for 11 games with the Chicago Blackhawks in 1953-54 — he later recalled famed broadcaster Foster Hewitt calling down the penalty box at Maple Leaf Gardens, asking “How the hell do you pronounce your name?” — and spent several more years in minor-pro and senior hockey.
He later served as band chief, and spent time speaking to and working with kids and teens, imparting lessons he learned while growing up and as an adult.
He helped build a sports framework in his community after returning to the reserve following his playing days, and worked with the NHL's Diversity Task Force and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
Sasakamoose spent much of his childhood at St. Michael's Indian Residential School in Duck Lake. He publicly acknowledged in 2012, during a Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing in Prince Albert, that he'd been sexually abused by other children at the school when he was nine years old.
A couple years before that, a truck collected him at his home and sent him to Duck Lake.
“They changed our clothes, cut our hair,” Sasakamoose — an Order of Canada recipient and an inductee into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame — told the StarPhoenix in 2007. “I had braids; they cut all that off. I was to become a white man. They told us not to speak our language.”
Sasakamoose became an accomplished hockey player at the residential school, and reluctantly joined the junior Moose Jaw Canucks after he went home for good in 1950.
The fast-skating Sasakamoose established himself quickly as a star, spent four seasons there, and was called up to the Blackhawks after the Canucks' season ended in February of 1954.