Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research will help guide policy development

A unique partnership between the University of Alberta and the Métis Nation of Alberta will benefit Métis across the country.

“While (the research centre) is focused in Alberta, our history knows no boundaries so it’s obvious any research that’s done will be of the Métis nation itself,” said Clem Chartier, president of the Métis National Council.

Chartier was in Edmonton on May 31 when the MNA and university announced the creation of the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research.

“This is the first academic research centre focused on Métis research in Canada,” said Dru Marshall, outgoing deputy provost with the U of A.

The centre is the culmination of a decade of work undertaken between the MNA and the university and the result of a memorandum of understanding that both parties signed in 2007.

It is also the result of a relationship that was formed between Chartier and the new research centre’s research director professor Frank Tough, associate dean of research in the Faculty of Native Studies at the U of A.  Chartier received a $5,000 research grant in 1993 and partnered with Tough, then teaching at the University of Saskatchewan. Five years later, Chartier received a $300,000 grant from the Saskatchewan and federal governments to do research on a Métis land claim in northwestern Saskatchewan. By that time Tough had moved on to the University of Alberta and Chartier engaged him and his research staff in the work.

Tough has also been involved in the Métis Archival Project Lab, which has resulted in an extensive database that will complement the work undertaken by the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research.

Chartier sees the centre serving as a base to contain research from across the country.

“This research has to be housed somewhere. It has to have a lasting life,” said Chartier.

But perhaps the greatest benefit Chartier sees coming from the new Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research is the voice it will give in educating both academia and the general public as to who the Métis people are.

“What’s important is that it’s not the Métis people themselves that will be making this articulation. It will be a joint articulation by an academic institute, like a university. So other professors, other universities will take it more meaningfully, will give it more credence because it’s their own institutions that are doing that. So in that sense it’s very helpful. So I see this as being a big boost,” said Chartier.

He also sees this definition of Métis helping the associations with the registries that are being created in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. In 2002 the MNC adopted a definition of Métis that was also adopted by the provincial associations and is now being used to register citizens.

“We’re doing registries but there are still tensions across the country about how far does the Métis nation expand…. We know there are people with mixed ancestry in the rest of Canada that say they are Métis, and that may be so if you use the dictionary definition for that kind of criteria for being mixed ancestry only, but we’re more than that,” said Chartier.

On a local front, MNA President Audrey Poitras said the research carried out by the centre will allow her provincial council to provide educated, well-supported direction to provincial policy.

“We have the unique opportunity to develop a policy think tank that will assist in an appropriate and timely response to the questions and issues impacting the Métis in this province,” said Poitras.

“It is our great hope that this new centre for Métis research will thrive and become a model for other such centres across the province and country,” said Adam Letourneau, chair of the Rupertsland Institute.

The Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research is an arm of the Rupertsland Institute, which is an affiliate of the MNA and delivers labour market programming to the Aboriginal population in Alberta.

Photo caption: Adam Letourneau, chair of the Rupertsland Institute, and Dru Marshall, deputy provost with the University of Alberta, announce the creation of the first academic research centre focused on Métis research in Canada.