Travellers set out to unearth their Scottish roots

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It's a long way to go for a family reunion.

About 20 First Nations and Metis people from Saskatchewan travelled nearly halfway around the world to discover a side of their family tree that they barely knew existed.

Two years of establishing contacts, fundraising and making arrangements ended in early September as more than two dozen Aboriginal men and women from Saskatchewan travelled to the Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland to trace their family heritage.

Dr. Wes Stevenson, vice-president of the First Nations University of Canada (FNUC), was one of those who made the once-in-a-lifetime journey of exploration.

"There's now such an affinity that's hard to describe, other than it must be those roots we share," he said.

"We're all better for the trip."

The travellers made the trip in time for one of the largest gatherings in Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkneys-an annual science fair. This year, genealogy-the study of one's family tree-became the science of choice.

The cultural exchange was the brainchild of Kim Foden, an Orkney resident who started researching her family tree in 2000. She discovered that one of her ancestors, Magnus Twatt, once worked in Western Canada for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in the early 1800s.

Her research also brought to light a part of history that, until recently, many in both Saskatchewan's Aboriginal community and in Scotland preferred not to discuss.

For two centuries-from 1670 to 1869-the HBC was the agent of the British government in Rupert's Land, an area encompassing the Hudson Bay watershed.

During that time the HBC hired many men from the Orkney Islands to work as factors, trappers and traders in the region where few non-Aboriginal men had gone before. They would sign contracts guaranteeing that they would serve with the company, usually for a five-year term. By the end of the 18th century, about two-thirds of the HBC employees came from the Orkneys.

One of the conditions in the contract was that the employee wouldn't socialize with the First Peoples of the district to which he was assigned. But out in the northwest, said Dr. Stevenson, that was usually one of the first rules to be broken.

"In many cases, the traders and trappers would take a woman from a First Nations community as a wife in order to cement a trade agreement," he said. "Sometimes it was done as a marriage of convenience. If he married into that tribe he was more accepted by the peoples he traded with. And, of course, in other cases, romance had a lot to do with it."

It was common for a HBC employee to leave a wife and family behind in the Orkneys when he went to work in Rupert's Land, only to take another wife and create another family while in the new land.

This left many HBC workers with a difficult choice when their five-year contract ran out, Stevenson said. Which family will he abandon, the one in Scotland or the one in Rupert's Land?

Magnus Twatt was one of those men who established a family in what is now central Saskatchewan, but who left them behind to return to the Orkneys when his term with the HBC expired.

Many of Twatt's descendants, however, continued to play a large role in Aboriginal society. Some of the men became chiefs of their people. At least one, William Twatt, signed Treaty 6, and for a time the Sturgeon Lake First Nation was named after him.

As she continued her research, Foden discovered that many Saskatchewan Aboriginal people have the same last names as many in the Orkneys-Brass, Drever, Gunn, Tait and many more.

"It was an eerie feeling," said Stevenson. "When we had pictures of our ancestors and they would have pictures of their ancestors ... and in some cases, they'd have the same pictures."

Nobody on either side of the Atlantic Ocean was sure about how the event would play out, but in the end it created lasting friendships.

"The Orcadians were well prepared for us. We didn't know, and they didn't know, wha the reunion would be like," said Stevenson. "But the day after when we went to perform (powwow dancing) at a recreation centre in Kirkwall it was filled to the brim and the reception spurred a tremendous feeling of respect."

Stevenson hopes that this begins a two-way relationship between the two peoples. The leader of the Orkney's government, Steven Hagen, was formally invited to the Sturgeon Lake First Nation powwow to be held July 25, 2005.

The FNUC, the Gabriel Dumont Institute and the University of the Highlands and Islands, a newly established university in Kirkwall, have also proposed establishing an Aboriginal study centre.