Willow Bunch history examined

Page 5

During a recent tour to promote his new book, The History of the Metis of Willow Bunch, Ron Rivard was asked the same question over and over again-how could anyone write a 230-page book about a part of Saskatchewan history that, as fascinating as it is, has been ignored by most historians?

"This history of Willow Bunch is rich," said Rivard, a Metis businessman and writer based in Saskatoon. "There are so many things that have gone on there that are noteworthy to the history of Saskatchewan and the North American West. And I wanted to provide a Metis point of view."

That's a viewpoint, he said, that's almost been lost, because almost all historians have ignored the Metis' impact on society in the West during the 19th century.

"My parents are from Willow Bunch. Their parents are from Willow Bunch. My roots are there. Nothing has been written, from any accounts that I have read, that are favourable towards the Metis. I wanted to make some changes to that portrayal."

To ignore the Metis, he said, would be to ignore the people who were hunters, trappers, guides, merchants, warriors, peacemakers, and translators-the kinds of people who formed the backbone of the fur trade, who were the leaders in society until the railroad and an Ottawa-based government pushed them aside.

"We had our own form of government, our own institutions. We taught our own children in our own way," Rivard said.

He and Catherine Littlejohn, a writer and teacher who co-wrote the book with Rivard, gathered the materials they used in the book while they were both working on social and economic development projects in the Willow Bunch area.

The book describes the history of the Metis people of Willow Bunch, who lived near the Big Muddy Valley, near the present-day border between Saskatchewan and Montana.

"We started with the history of the Metis people, starting with the Red River settlements," he said. "Many of the Willow Bunch Metis people are descended from those of the Red River."

Many moved to the Willow Bunch area to follow the herds of free-ranging buffalo, while others moved to the district after the 1869 Red River uprising.

The book tells of the Metis' encounters with the Sioux peoples, who were involved with their own battles with the United States military. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Sioux fled across the border, near where the Willow Bunch Metis settled. When Inspectors Walsh and McLeod of the North West Mounted Police met Sitting Bull, Metis men acted as translators. When food ran low and the Canadian government tried to starve the Sioux people into going back to the U.S., Jean-Louis Legare, who owned the general store in Willow Bunch, provided Sitting Bull's people with supplies. But it was the Metis people who stocked Legare.

During the Saskatchewan Rebellion of 1885, many Willow Bunch Metis headed to Batoche to aid their relatives in defending Louis Riel's provisional government.

"We found accounts of Gabriel Dumont and Riel meeting in Willow Bunch," Rivard said. "The federal government made deliberate efforts to keep the Willow Bunch Metis at home. They were hired by government officials to do the scouting along the border, in order to prevent them from joining the battle."

The fall of Batoche is generally regarded as the beginning of the end of the Metis' political and social influence in Western Canada. In Willow Bunch, the end came in the early 1900s, when priests came from France to run the mission, The Sisters of the Cross.

Unlike the priests from Quebec who promoted Catholicism to the Metis people, the priests from France had no respect for Metis culture, and regarded the people as savages.

"From my observation, this marked the changing point where Metis people perceived their culture, their language, and the way they lived their lives," Rivard said. "The priests called us all those stereotypes."