Metis Identity - A Source of Rights?
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Metis Identity - A Source of Rights? |
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The thumbnail sketches which follow are by no means exhaustive of the data available to support the expressions of Métis identity in these communities. At best, they are an indication of a how badly resources are needed in these communities to research and document their history and heritage as Métis peoples. New Brunswick Métis Community
The New Brunswick Association of Metis and Non-Status Indians (NBAMNSI), as it was known at the time, was among the most vocal of those Maritime organizations who were asserting a distinct Métis identity among their constituency. Although their membership may have included some Métis transplanted from the prairies, the majority of those who called themselves Métis were indigenous to New Brunswick and pre-dated the Red River Métis by as much as a century. As we have already pointed out, one of the earliest appearances of the word "Métis" in print was on a map of the St. John River area drawn in 1778.
During the 1977-80 research on potential claims NBAMNSI identified the fact that ìa great deal of material on the Métis of New Brunswick is contained in archival stocks at the Center for Acadian Studies, University of Moncton, Moncton, N.B.î To this date resources to explore these archives have not been available, but in spite of that limitation, the association produced considerable evidence in support of its Métis constituency.
Labrador Métis Community
The Métis community of Labrador was overlooked by history until the early 1980s. As has been pointed out in a brief to the Commission in September 1993, by the Labrador Metis Association (LMA), the fact of metissage is an integral part of Labradorís history. The use of the term "Métis" to describe that population is relatively recent, and not unchallenged. The LMA made the following submission to the Royal Commission.
"For many generations, before Newfoundland and Labrador joined with Canada and long before Canada itself existed as a nation, the Labrador Métis, who then commonly referred to as ìlivyersî or ìsettlersî lived on the Coast, both North and South -- in complete harmony with the land and the sea, much the same as their Inuit and Innu neighbors. The same can be said for those who ultimately settled in the Lake Melville region and became the celebrated trappers of central Labrador.
As we shall see in the claims section the Métis claim of LMA has been submitted to the federal government and is currently under active negotiation.
The Quebec Métis Community
Given a sane and orderly world, one might expect Quebec to be the focal point of MÈtis identity in Canada. It is certainly the largest single mixed-blood population in the country. And given the world we do have, the simple fact is that the issue of Métis and metissage is such a volatile issue in Quebec that it actually inhibits the expression of Métis identity.
For much of its early association with the NCC, the Native Alliance of Quebec (NAQ) preferred to emphasize the commonalities among its constituents in terms of Aboriginal ancestry and access to Aboriginal rights. The specific issue of the differences between Indian and Métis did not surface often in the public presentations of the Alliance in the pre-constitutional period.
In recent years, however, expression related to being Métis in Quebec have become both vocal and assertive. There has been considerable recognition of the Métis roots of Quebec in the writings of Jean Morisset of the University of Quebec in Montreal.
"Between the 17th and 19th centuries, a Canadian nation was formed that originated exclusively with the creoles of French America. This nation seems to have relinquished its original name, and in this last quarter of the 20th century, it now refers to itself as the Québécois people."
The Métis constituency within the Alliance is calling on the governments of Canada and the province to recognize Métis in Quebec as a distinct nation. In a paper tabled at the consultation forum of the NAQ on the Charlottetown Accord in Campbell's Bay in 1992, the MÈtis participants said:
"We the Métis People of the province
of Québec are distinct
Aboriginal People in the province of QuÈbec
and in Canada. We will no longer remain
in the back seat of First Nationís
dreams, hoping for their good will.
We the Métis people have a right to the front seat and we are taking it."
It is evident that the Métis population of QuÈbec is, like most other Métis communities in Canada is developing an expanding population in the ìtransitionalî mode we spoke of earlier.
Ontario Métis Communities
If only because of its sheer size, Ontario, of all of the provinces, has the most diverse Aboriginal population in Canada. In the south and east, the population more closely resembles the Maritimes or southern Quebec in terms of the potential for the mixed-blood populations to identify as Indian. Northern Ontario peoples have more in common with the peoples of Northern Quebec or the Territories and in the western part of the provinces the tendency for mixed-bloods to identify as MÈtis is similar to the people of the prairie provinces.
Ontario Aboriginal communities also have correspondingly diverse histories from east to west and north to south. The result is a broad range of identity patterns related to their respective histories. The following thumbnail sketches reflect those differences.
Burleigh Falls
At the time the community of Burleigh Falls, near Peterborough, Ontario, became actively involved in asserting its identity as a Métis community in 1975, it consisted of some 100 families. Most of them were descendants of Indians and Halfbreeds who signed treaties in the area in 1818 and 1856, but who did not receive a reserve and, in many cases were later enfranchised or ìmarried outî of the Indian Act.
In all of its correspondence with OMNSIA and the NCC community leaders insisted that at the time the ancestors of the present community signed treaty, no distinction was made between Indian and Halfbreeds and both were included in the process. They assert continuous use and occupancy of lands in the area and, in the context of the 1977-80 lands claims research process asserted their right as Métis indigenous to the Burleigh Falls area. The community staged an annual Métis Days festival for several years, and became actively involved in a demographic study of their community and in renewing their indigenous heritage.
Moose Factory
The Métis community of Moose Factory has the distinction of being the only Métis community in Ontario in which scrip still plays and active role in their claims process, a fact that will be dealt with in the rights section.
When Treaty 9 Commissioners visited the Moose Factory area in 1905, a well established mixed blood population already existed in the community. The work of John S. Long in this area makes it clear there were two distinct population of mixed bloods in the area. The first groups was readily included in the Treaty by Commissioners, the other group was not, although both sets of families spoke Cree fluently and were proud of their Aboriginal heritage. From his point of view:
"The Treaty 9 Commissioners in fact created the legally- defined status of Metis when they excluded certain Native people from the provisions of the Treaty in 1905. When I speak of Metis (in the Moose area) I speak of this legally-defined group."
The excluded groups were then offered 160 acres of land by a provincial official in compensation for having been excluded from the Treaty. Such an offer, considering the scrip system prevalent in the west, would again reinforce the identification of these families as Métis, although the term ìhalf-breedsî was used in communication with both federal and provincial governments.
There is at least some indication that some family members preferred scrip to Treaty as away of avoiding what Long calls the ìstigmaî of being a status Indian in 1905.
Moose factory is as good example of how identity as ìnativeî or ìindigenousî people in an area can become linked with the term Métis as a result of renewed awareness on the part of descendants of an historical event --like exclusion from Treaty.
Alberta Metis Settlements
The Alberta Métis Settlements are a valuable example to our later exploration of available alternatives for the accommodation of a variety of MÈtis communities across Canada. As an historically recognized Métis population with many connections to the Red River Métis, the eight communities of the Settlements have chosen to negotiate their own form of accommodation.
The process that created the original Settlements has also created one of two legislated definition of M étis in Canada today. Those definitions are:
ìa person of mixed white and Indian blood having not less than one-quarter Indian blood, but does not include either an Indian or a non-Treaty Indian as defined in the Indian Act.î
It is interesting to note that, following the re-instatement of a number of Métis on the Settlements as registered Indians under Bill C-31, the definition was amended in 1990 to read:
...a person of Aboriginal ancestry who identifies with Métis history and culture"
Again we have an indication of a situation in which changes external to the community can alter the context in which identity and definition take place within a given community.
Louis Riel Métis Council (B.C.)
The Louis Riel Métis Council (LRMC) in Surrey British Columbia is a good example of an urban Métis community struggling both for recognition and for the means to provide services to its Métis constituents. Like its predecessor organizations in the 1970s, the LRMC was conceived a few years ago out of a need to provide services to Métis people in the Vancouver area. Although many of its core members have strong ancestral ties to prairie Métis groups, the organization itself soon found itself called on to serve the interests of Métis across the province.
Kelly Lake
The Métis community of Kelly Lake is often described as the only all-Métis community in B.C. It is highlighted here as an example of a remote Métis community which, because of its identity, suffers a lack of access to programs and services readily available to Indian and even other Métis communities in the area.
If Kelly Lake was located 60 meters east of where it is, it would be eligible for Alberta programs designed to serve remote Métis communities. As it is, the 100 year community founded by refugees from the Riel resistance struggles to survive in a bureaucratic climate designed to ignore the communities needs.
The community cannot be designated, or serviced, as the reserve it looks like, but then the community does not want to be a reserve. As one community member put it:
"We call ourselves the freedom people because, 125 years ago, we saw what would happen to people when they went onto reserves. We donít want to be controlled and we donít want to be on reserves." --Clifford Calliou
At this point I hope you have a better idea of what I am talking about when I talk about Métis, Métis peoples, and Métis communities in the pan-Canadian sense of those terms.
We can now examine attempts to legislate
the identity of Métis populations in the generic sense of the word
by excluding them via a process of defining the term "Indian"
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