Lac Ste. Anne (1844), St. Albert (1861), Lac La Biche (1853), and St. Paul de Métis (1890). The Hudson's Bay Company's land claim in the west (called Rupert's Land) was sold to the newly formed Dominion of Canada with the passing of The British North America Act, 1867 (Canadas founding Constitution, 1867). The sale of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory in 1869/70 officially ended its legal monopoly on the fur trade (not enforced since the trial of Métis trapper Guillaume Sayer in 1849). The fur trade was an economic boom for the Métis as it opened the fur and buffalo meat trades to private Métis and non-Metis traders. However, it also exposed them to a flood of European and Canadian colonists seeking to profit and disenfranchise the Métis from their lands. Métis living closer to Canadian occupied territory such as the Red River Métis, today in parts of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, took up arms against the Canadian government in the two failed Riel Rebellions (or "Riel Resistances" in 1869 and 1885) in an attempt to assert their rights in the face of the newcomers. Following the rebellions, some Red River Métis fled northwest, married into the northwest Métis populations of northern Alberta (formerly known as the District of Athabaska in the North-West Territories) or assimilated into surrounding Euro-Canadian society. The end of these rebellions, combined with the collapse of the fur and buffalo meat industries, forced many Albertan Métis off their lands and reduced them to critical levels of poverty. On the whole, the Métis cultures and communities survived with farming, ranching, fishing, and industry replacing their traditional economy of fur trading as the main economic activity in the Parkland Belt, though trapping and hunting have remained very important in the Rocky Mountain and boreal forest regions. More urban Métis who live in close proximity to other cultural groups may have intermarried and assimilated into mainstream Euro-Albertan society to the point that their descendants no longer recognize themselves as Métis. However, in much of northern Alberta, the Métis in more remote rural and isolated communities have remained culturally distinct. Many of the contemporary Métis settlement population have retained their unique cultural heritage and history due to land grants provided by King George V by way of the Metis Population Betterment Act of 1938. This act gave back a certain amount of land to the Métis for their use. In 1990,