Robert Smallboy

Chief Johnny Bob Smallboy (7 November 1898 - 8 July 1984), also Robert or Apitchitchiw, was a community leader who focused national attention on urban and reserve Indian problems when he "returned to the land" with followers from troubled Indian settlements.

He was born on Peigan Reserve, SW of Fort Macleod, Alta on 7 November 1898, of a traditional Cree family who were among the last to settle on their allotted reserve at Hobbema in central Alberta. Smallboy became a hunter, trapper, farmer, and eventually chief of the Ermineskin Band from 1959 to 1969. In 1968, to escape deteriorating social and political conditions on the reserve, he moved to a bush camp on the Kootenay Plains, accompanied by some 125 people. Despite factional splits, the return of many residents to Hobbema, and the group's failure to obtain permanent land tenure, Smallboy Camp persisted into the 1980s as a working community used as a retreat by Plains and Woodlands Indians from western Canada and the US.

Smallboy received the Order of Canada in 1979.