Yukon who is who

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Arthur Eugene O’Meara (1859 - 1928)
	
Arthur O’Meara was born in Port Hope, Ontario to father Reverend Frederick Augustus O’Meara. Frederick O’Meara served for twenty years as a missionary at Sault Ste. Marie and Manitoulin Island and made the first Ojibway translation of the Bible and Common Prayer.((E. Palmer Patterson, “Arthur E. O’Meara, Friend of the Indians.” //Pacific Northwest Quarterly,// Vol. 58, No. 2, April 1967: 90-99.)) 
	
Arthur O’Meara completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Toronto in 1882 and was called to the bar in 1885. After twenty years as a lawyer, he entered the diaconate of the Anglican Church. His first assignment was a post offered by Bishop Bompas and in 1906 he moved to Conrad. He conducted his services in a tent that housed the territorial public reading room. When he found that no one was in town on Sunday he took his mission to the mining camps. O’Meara also served as Bishop Stringer’s financial secretary from 1906 to 1910.((E. Palmer Patterson, “Arthur E. O’Meara, Friend of the Indians.” //Pacific Northwest Quarterly,// Vol. 58, No. 2, April 1967: 90-99.))
	
In 1905, Reverend Eugene O’Meara started travelling around the Yukon ministering to his flock.(("Diocese of Yukon." //The New Era.// Vol. VI, No. 4, April 1908.)) In 1907, he received an invitation to visit the First Nation people at Teslin Lake and reported on his trip in //The New Era.// He travelled from Whitehorse to Nisutlin Bay on the steamer //Quick.// He remained five days on Teslin Lake. He secured help from a man living on the river and they travelled down the Teslin River to Mason's Landing in a small boat. O'Meara sent fourteen salmon he caught in Teslin Lake to the miners at Livingstone. O'Meara had intended to visit Livingstone on his return trip but a bush fire in the area affected the road in from Mason's Landing and he decided to postpone the visit.(("Reverend A. E. O'Meara, "A Missionary Journey to Teslin Lake." //The New Era,// September 1907, Vol. 5, No. 9.)) He did travel to Livingstone in August 1907. To get there, O'Meara travelled by boat to the mouth of the Hootalinqua [Teslin] River and then walked thirty-six miles up the river to Mason's Landing and over the road to Livingstone. There were two members of the Royal North-West Mounted Police in town and they are in photos published by the //New Era.// O'Meara's church service was the second held in the district. The first was held by Reverend Cody of Whitehorse.(("Diocese of Yukon." //The New Era.// Vol. VI, No. 4, April 1908.))  
	
In 1908, O’Meara attended a synod in Ottawa. The Nishga [Nisga’a] in British Columbia protested threats to their land and chose O’Meara to take their protests to England. O’Meara left the north in 1910 and that year he was described as the representative of a new group called the Friends of the Indians of British Columbia. In 1910, a delegation to Premier McBride received the blunt reply “You have no claim.” In 1911, Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier suggested that the courts should decide if there was a basis for a claim and in 1912, the Dominion and the province reached an agreement called the McKenna-McBride agreement. This led to the Royal Commission of 1913-1916 to determine reserve areas. Seeing the process bogged down, the Nishga submitted their complaints through O’Meara to the Governor-General, who answered that they had to wait for the decision of the commission. He told O’Mears that if the decision was not satisfactory then the Nishga could take their case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. No future statements to the contrary deterred O’Meara from this course of action for the rest of his career.((E. Palmer Patterson, “Arthur E. O’Meara, Friend of the Indians.” //Pacific Northwest Quarterly,// Vol. 58, No. 2, April 1967: 90-99.))

In 1914, the Canadian government proposed that First Nation claims be settled in the Canadian courts, but they had to agree in advance to accept allotments of land if the court found in their favour. The Nishga refused and the government considered the case closed. O’Meara kept fighting with briefs as he believed that a decision by the Privy Council in London would set the precedent for future land claims in all of British Columbia. The discussion did succeed in the creation of the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, a training ground for First Nation leaders and O’Meara was their legal advisor. In 1926, the Allied Tribes asked for a Parliamentary investigation of their claims and this led to the creation of the Special Committee of the Senate and House of Common to investigate the claims. About this time the Tribes realized that O’Meara was not their most effective representative and they should take more initiative.((E. Palmer Patterson, “Arthur E. O’Meara, Friend of the Indians.” //Pacific Northwest Quarterly,// Vol. 58, No. 2, April 1967: 90-99.)) Throughout the whole twenty years, O’Meara had been working for the Tribes and not with them. The Committee ended with a grant of $100,000 and attention to specific problems. Although the Nishga believed they had been unfairly treated, the Allied Tribes was a spent force and it disbanded. O’Meara died the year after the Special Committee hearings decision.((E. Palmer Patterson, “Arthur E. O’Meara, Friend of the Indians.” //Pacific Northwest Quarterly,// Vol. 58, No. 2, April 1967: 90-99.))