Who are the Metis people?

Page 5

The argument is on again about who has the right to call themselves Metis. The reasoning expressed by leaders in the political organizations has a remarkably similar ring to it. The "real" Metis are in the West. But wait, the "real" Metis are in the East. Each claims a heritage going back to the days of the fur trade.

What they don't say is what anyone has to gain from saying they are Metis if they are not. Only a few in the West have title to land grants, and the amount of government money trickling down to grassroots membership in any Metis organization has been limited to short-term education and training projects. Some who are not in the political spotlight say they are not themselves very concerned with definitions.

Others, such as expressed in researcher Harry Daniels' paper on Metis nationhood for Alberta Senator Thelma Chalifoux, point out that Metis in other areas such as Treaty 9 were promised land grants but never got them. Both land and other Aboriginal entitlements are on the agendas of Aboriginal political organizations, particularly since the Metis got recognition as an Aboriginal people in the Constitution Act, 1982.

The Metis National Council, with regional organizations in five provinces, states that "The Metis people were born from the marriages of Cree, Ojibwa and Salteaux women and the French and Scottish fur traders, beginning in the mid-1600s Scandinavian, Irish and English stock were added to the mix as western Canada was explored."

Further, a document on the council's Web site says the Metis were intermediaries between European and Indian cultures in numerous roles, and there were Metis villages between the Great Lakes and the Mackenzie Delta.

Today, however, the organization is trying to confine its membership to descendents of the Red River colony and a few other pockets of "traditional homeland" in the prairie provinces, northwestern Ontario and northeastern British Columbia. If council president Gerald Morin has his way, the rest of the country's mixed blood people with Indian ancestry, whether or not they follow any Native traditions, speak an Aboriginal language or self-identify with Metis culture and heritage, will not be eligible for membership in his organization.

He said this is not a new policy, but the council's stance has been attracting attention recently as the organization has been negotiating in Ottawa to get its narrow definition of Metis accepted by the federal government.

Christi Belcourt, director of communications and media relations for the council, said on Aug. 26, however, "press reports have been misleading.

"The meeting in Ottawa was not just to discuss the definition. The meeting . . . was actually a Metis rights panel meeting . . . to discuss the litigation and the framework agreement that they're trying to form to draft to then present to the government to get a negotiation table happening, to eventually end up with a Metis nation agenda."

She said discussion around the definition was limited.

What discussion there was, she said, flowed from the June 9 and 10 council assembly in Vancouver when a working definition was approved in principal. But consultation with all their provincial affiliate organizations has to take place on the definition before it is brought before next year's assembly and "either ratified or not."

The Metis Provincial Council of British Columbia is a governing member organization affiliated with the Metis National Council. Former British Columbia region six director Valery Simonds is now president of a Metis local in Prince Rupert. She said her opinion is that Gerald Morin's attempt to narrow the definition of Metis "is a big mistake.

"Not everyone can prove they came from the Red River. Government documents are sealed and people are not able to access all of their genealogy."

Simonds added that although her family is from Red River and is descended from Cuthbert Grant, an uncle living in Medicine Hat, Alta. is unable to obtai a Metis card.

Morin concedes that some people who think they have a right to be included will be left out.

Cheryl Shirtliffe, administrative assistant in the Manitoba Metis Federation's southeast regional office at Grand Marais, said "maybe I'll be left out as well." Although she stressed she was not speaking for her organization and was not well versed in the political context of the issue, she said "I definitely have (an opinion)."

She agrees with the idea of potential federation members having to prove their genealogy. As for excluding people that don't fit the council's draft definition, she said, "I think that's going a step too far."

Predictably, Michael McGuire, president of the Ontario Metis Aboriginal Association, which has disagreed with the Metis National Council before, agrees with the general views expressed by his rival's grassroots affiliate members.

McGuire said the council's definition of who is a Metis person "is certainly not our definition here in Ontario."

The president talked at length about Metis ceremonies and traditions and mentioned an Ontario legend that he heard from his grandfather.

"When the hills echo, he said, the land will give up the secret and the two tribes would be recognized."

He added, "We in Ontario are saying that we are the Woodland Metis tribe . . . and the other tribe would be the Oji-Cree tribe, so we would be both half-breed tribes."

Their medicine people tell them that all Anishnaabe people are part of the red race, and the Woodland Metis people are part of that race.

McGuire calls the Sault Ste. Marie area the traditional homeland area for the Metis people, as they were grouped tribally along the river there before they were ever a community in the West.

"The Ojibways, the French company and the Hudson's Bay Company also lived there on one part of their own land." He also pointed out that one of the Metis chiefs from his area was one of the negotiators of the Robinson-Superior treaty before 1850.

Manitba Metis Federation President David Chartrand doesn't accept that. In an Aug. 20 interview on CBW-AM radio in Winnipeg, he said that their position, since the Charlottetown Accord, is that "the Metis are in fact descendents of the Red River, and Dominion Lands Act, that's what the Constitution states today." He said their own Elders tell them "who are the Metis, and clearly the Metis was created in Manitoba."

He said they are watching other provinces with court cases hinging in part on definitions of who is a Metis, such as recent hunting cases in Saskatchewan and Ontario, where it appeared the court was taking a broader view than what Chartrand's organization takes. He said they are intent on defining their membership before the courts do it.

A draft bill drawn up this spring by Senator Chalifoux to honor Louis Riel on his birthday, Oct. 22, was distributed to Metis Nation of Alberta members for comment. In it, Chalifoux wrote, "The historic role of Louis Riel as a founder of the Metis people is acknowledged." Few who call themselves Metis would dispute that. At least there the Metis people have common ground.