Georges-Antoine Belcourt (April 22, 1803 – May 31, 1874), also George Antoine Bellecourt,[1] was a French Canadian Roman Catholic diocesan priest and missionary.

His parents, devout Roman Catholics, brought their son up in the same faith, and the young Belcourt received his first Holy Communion in 1814.

[3][4] During his time at Sainte-Martine, the young priest aspired to do missionary work in the west of British North America and applied for it.

After spending two months learning the Algonquian language, Belcourt departed from his home town on April 27 of that year in a canoe of the Hudson's Bay Company.

[3] In 1832, Belcourt established the first native-only mission west of Saint Boniface, but Gros Ventre raids forced its closure the following year.

He abandoned the plan after discovering that the First Nations people were unwilling to give up their Hudson's Bay Company-supplied liquor, as he required for conversion to Christianity.

In 1840, the missionary established a mission among the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations, where he repeated his Baie-Saint-Paul design: a log chapel at the centre surrounded by small cabins for the local population, with outlying farms.

In 1845, Belcourt served as the chaplain to some buffalo hunters, but returned to his first mission at Baie-Saint-Paul to teach the Chippewa language to a group of oblates.

Belcourt and six of the hunters travelled south to the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in search of medicine, as the priest's supply had quickly run out.

[5] In 1847, in response to perceived discrimination against First Nations people by the Hudson's Bay Company in the fur trade, Belcourt prepared a petition to Queen Victoria to seek redress.

The petition was signed by 977 First Nations people, but the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, consulted with advisors who had little sympathy for the natives and took no action in the case.

On August 14, 1848, the missionary baptised his first person in Pembina, and held a Holy Communion class consisting of 92 Native Americans.

Belcourt described the original territory of the Chippewa in the Pembina district as several hundred miles north to south, and east to west - much larger than the small reservation to which they were later assigned.

In addition to performing his missionary work, Belcourt engaged in political advocacy on the behalf of Métis and Anishinaabeg peoples.

In 1849, Belcourt gathered a petition of one hundred names of Métis heads of families protesting ongoing encroachment on the buffalo robe and pemmican trade by the Hudson's Bay Company.

[6] In November 1849, the young and recently ordained priest Albert Lacombe arrived in Pembina and immediately started to learn the Chippewa language.

Despite claiming to have to resort to manual labour to pay for his food, Belcourt supported a household that included a school teacher, a housekeeper, a Chippewa cook and several servants.

[7] A strong advocate of prohibition of alcohol, especially among Native Americans and First Nations peoples, Belcourt petitioned the US Congress to prevent the illicit trafficking of liquor from Canada into the United States.