Ralph Garvin Steinhauer, (June 8, 1905 – September 19, 1987) was the tenth lieutenant governor of Alberta, and the first Aboriginal person to hold that post. Personal life Ralph Garvin Apow (later Steinhauer) was born on June 8, 1905, at Morley, Northwest Territories (prior to the formation of the province of Alberta), the second of four children to Josiah Apow and Amelia Mildred Mumford. Steinhauer was a treaty Indian of Cree descent. Steinhauers's father Josiah died in 1908, and his mother married James Arthur Steinhauer on October 12, 1910, a descendant of the Cree Methodist missionary Henry Bird Steinhauer. He married Isabel Florence Margaret Davidson on November 20, 1928, and had five children. In 1937, Ralph Steinhauer was diagnosed with tuberculosis and a decision was made to send the three eldest children to a residential school. After his recovery, his wife Isabel educated the children at home after their request to have the children educated at a community school was denied on the basis of their Indigenous heritage. Steinhauer became a farmer and began clearing a 16-hectare homestead, and continued farming until his death in 1987. During the Great Depression Steinhauer supplemented his farming work with other labour such as logging and cutting fence posts. He died in Edmonton on September 19, 1987, following pulmonary problems. Education Ralph Steinhauer moved schools several times as a child due to his father's work as a missionary. Steinhauer attended the residential school in Red Deer, the Doucet, Roseneath, Vilettea and Stry schools in northern Alberta and for three years starting in 1920 the Brandon Indian Residential School in Manitoba, and finished with a Grade 8 education. When Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau asked him to be the lieutenant governor of Alberta, he responded, "I'm not schooled for a thing like this... You're plucking a person out of the farmyard and an Indian at that." Career In the 1920s, he became district president of the United Farmers of Alberta. He was a founder and the president of the Indian Association of Alberta. He ran unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate for the House of Commons of Canada in the Alberta riding of Vegreville in the 1963 federal election, placing a distant third behind Progressive Conservative Frank Fane and Social Credit candidate Metro Tomyn. Steinhauer was the second treaty Indian to run as a candidate in a federal election. He was chief of the Saddle Lake Indian