Game makes Metis history fun to learn

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A Calgary Metis historian and an Idaho artist turned a Native history-telling tradition into a game for adults and children.

The new game, called the Metis Winter Count Game, is based on the tradition of recording significant historical events using pictographs painted on animal hides.

"[The winter count] is like a time-line," said game co-creator Geoff Burtonshaw of Calgary, referring to the artistic history-keeping technique of various First Nations, such as the Sioux and Blackfoot.

In the Metis Winter Count Game, players try to match symbols and colors printed on two rabbit hides with the same symbols and colors printed on a deck of cards.

The game's 64 pictographs span events from the landing of Viking Leif Ericson on North American shores in 1004 A.D. to the Manitoba Land Claims in 1998.

Ailene Wright, an artist and part-time horse trainer who lives with her husband, Jack, near Sand Point, Idaho, designed pictographs using Burtonshaw's simple drawings.

By being the first to match certain symbols on the rabbit skins with the six cards in one's hand, a player wins one stone from every other player. The player who captures all the other players' stones wins the game. Up to six people can play at one time.

Unlike other games, the purpose of the Metis Winter Count Game goes beyond fun.

"Geoff wanted an interesting way of talking with people who were just finding out they were Metis," said Wright.

For about 15 years, including six years as a volunteer Metis genealogist at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Burtonshaw has helped people piece together fragments of the Metis heritage often hidden from them.

"It's often the 45 to 50 year olds who have some old grandma tell them as she is dying, 'You have Indian blood.' They don't have a clue about their background. Where do they go?"

If they are lucky, they will find out about Burtonshaw. Wright, for example, a Canadian-born Metis who has spent most of her life in the United States, only heard the slur 'half-breed' before she visited Canada and has since heard a new word: "Metis."

About four years ago, after finding one of Burtonshaw's newsletters, Neya Powagons in the Calgary Metis office, Wright contacted the respected Metis genealogist.

Now, thanks to Burtonshaw, she is proud to spread out her own Metis Pedigree Chart, one that reaches back to the 1700s.

Burtonshaw, originally from the Lake Dauphin and Lake Manitoba area of Manitoba, is not Metis himself but has married a Metis woman.

As for his genealogy work, "I've enjoyed every minute of it," he said. The copyrighted Metis Winter Count Game is intended to share the fun and knowledge with others.

Each game's burlap bag contains two rabbit skins, a deck of cards, 24 playing stones and a booklet of brief descriptions of the game's historical events. Each game is still hand-made by Wright and Burtonshaw.

For more information, please contact Geoff Burtonshaw at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.