The Michel Band also called the Michel Caillehoo, Michel Caillehouis, Michel Caillehow, Michel Calahoo, Michel Calistrois, or Michel Calliho Band was a group of "Indians" (typically First Nations people]) united in a band government. The band was a party to Treaty 6 with the Canadian government, having signed an adhesion to it in 1876. In 1880 - A 40-square mile reserve was surveyed as “Michel I.R. 132" on the Sturgeon River, about eight miles from the Roman Catholic Mission at St. Albert, 15 miles 5 miles northwest of Edmonton. Reserve confirmed by Order in Council PC 1151 on May 17, 1889. Like all First Nations in the Edmonton area, the Michel Band members came under heavy government and settlement pressure to surrender their rich agricultural land. Land sales marked by government corruption steadily eroded their land base through the next half-century. In 1958, the Michel Band became the only First Nation in Canada in the twentieth century to enfranchise. . In 1985 many descendants of the historic Michel Band regained Indian Status through Bill C-31. They have since that time lobbied the federal government to once again recognize them as an Indian band with Aboriginal and treaty rights.
Many band members trace their ancestry to Louis Callihoo, also known as Kara Komptee, Kwarakwante, a Mohawk born in 1782, Sault St. Louis, in what is now called Kahnawake, Que.
In 1800, Louis Kwarkwante signed on as a voyageur with the North West Company (a clerk changed his name to: Caliheue) and travelled West to Northern Alberta. fur trader from Montreal region who married three local women (a Sekani native and two French-Cree Metis sisters). Iroquois may at one time have been the language of the band, but by the late nineteenth century Father Albert Lacombe wrote that most band members spoke Cree or French, which may also mean that Michif, a mixed Cree-French language, was also present.