The Métis Nation and its history is often misunderstood having been either poorly taught, misrepresented or ignored. On our journey to discover a more complete history, we are very happy to have the opportunity to sit down at the kitchen table to chat with Graham Paradis. Graham is Michif/Wiisaakodewin from Penetanguishene with ancestral ties to the Métis homelands in Lesser Slave Lake and the Red River Settlement.
The Métis Nation and its history is often misunderstood having been either poorly taught, misrepresented or ignored. On our journey to discover a more complete history, we are very happy to have the opportunity to sit down at the kitchen table to chat with Graham Paradis. Graham is Michif/Wiisaakodewin from Penetanguishene with ancestral ties to the Métis homelands in Lesser Slave Lake and the Red River Settlement.
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:15] ANNOUNCER: Welcome back to The Open Door, presented by The Brown Homestead in the heart of the beautiful Niagara Peninsula.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:18] AH: In Canada, when we speak broadly of Indigenous people, we tend to think of the three groups defined by the Constitution Act of 1982, those being the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. Looking past that broad classification opens up the possibility of many possible and necessary discussions or, better yet, if you're doing it right, many important journeys of discovery. Our focus today is the Métis Nation and its history, which is often misunderstood, having been either poorly taught, misrepresented or ignored.
Our goal, or my goal for myself, and my hope for everyone listening is, to become a little better informed and a little wiser over the next few minutes. With that in mind, I'm very happy to have the opportunity to share this journey with Graham Paradis. Welcome, Graham.
[0:01:02] GP: Thanks for having me, Andrew. It's good to be here today.
[0:01:04] AH: Normally at this point, I offer a bit of background about our guests, but you have a pretty eclectic set of interests and pursuits. I feel like I'm at risk of either talking way too long or leaving out something important. So, I'm hoping you can help me out and tell us a little bit about yourself and why this is an important topic for you.
[0:01:20] GP: Yes. My name like you said is Graham Paradis. I'm a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario. My family comes from Penetanguishene, but we also have ties to Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta and the Red River Settlement. The families that I come from are the [inaudible 0:01:31]. I was born and raised actually in southern Ontario, not too far from home. Because of that, I was really lucky to have my dad take me back home a lot on weekends and summer vacations and family holidays, et cetera to sit around the table. I'm a beat artist, a father, and I'm a singer. I sing at powwows all across North America. I'm really lucky to travel around. That's pretty much everything that's interesting about me.
[0:02:00] AH: Awesome. Now, you said sit around the table, and the title of this episode is Kitchen Table Talk, which comes from something you said when we last spoke, do you remember?
[0:02:08] GP: Yes, there's talking about kitchen table talks and how – with a lot of Métis people, that's how a lot of decisions are made in families is around the kitchen table. I think food is a very central part to our identity. But also, the kitchen table is kind of like a meeting place. You'd meet there for meals, you’d meet there for card games, you'd meet there during family parties. That's where a lot of important discussions would happen was be around the kitchen table. I've always used the term or always heard the term kitchen table talk whenever we talked about having an important discussion, but discussions that aren't so rigid and in more of a relaxed way, the way it's done like familiar or familiarly with family members, or friends, or kinship, or close relatives.
[0:02:51] AH: The idea is to let that be the guiding spirit of our discussion today. It may be counterintuitive. But as we entered into or hoped to enter into a period of reconciliation and finding a better way forward together, a lot of people find conversations about Indigenous history issues to be very challenging, because we all want to say the right things. But the fact is that most of us don't have the knowledge or education to avoid the risk of potentially saying something stupid or worse something offensive. Now, I take some comfort in my suspicion that I probably would have a hard time coming up with something dumb to say that you haven't heard before.
[0:03:25] GP: You could always surprise me. I think we've always heard misinformation here and there, historically and contemporarily. I think we're at an age where a lot of that is coming from genuine places of interest. People have questions, and they don't necessarily know how to ask them, but they try. I think there are certain people within our communities that have the gift of being able to speak, are very good at what they do, and are meant to answer those questions in a good way. I guess they have the patience to kind of put aside some of the things that could be seen as offensive and try to educate people in a good way, I guess. That's the best way I could think to put it.
[0:04:05] AH: I've been a beneficiary of some very patient people in my time as part of my journey, so I appreciate that. We'll definitely come back to that, and then we'll talk more about misconceptions, and so on. But my point of mentioning it is that I'm a great believer that if we're going to have meaningful conversations about challenging topics, we're going to have to acknowledge our own ignorance sometimes and risk looking dumb.
[0:04:25] GP: Yes, I think that's a really good point, even myself, right? There are a lot of things that I'm ignorant of. Just like the other day, me and a friend were at a two-spirit powwow. We are both straight men. There was a point where something was going on and we didn't really fully understand it. We were trying to ask each other questions and figuring it out. We're like, "I don't understand it, but I fully support it." And like I want to ask, but I don't want to be offensive. Like I said, as long as it's coming from like a good place, good intention, if it's coming from respect, if it's coming from a place of love, then it's kind of hard to get upset about it, right?
[0:04:59] AH: That's the goal, is to encourage people to engage, to talk to each other, and do it with good intent in your heart, and do with openness, and maybe we could start to get past those uncomfortable moments and connect a little bit better. Now, I'm not just going to use that as a recommendation for people. I'm going to actually put my money where my mouth is, and take a risk here. The last time we talked, you used an Anishinaabe term for Métis. I said at the time, I wasn't going to ask you to teach it to me then, so we could do it now as part of this episode. Why don't we see if we can do that?
[0:05:29] GP: Yes. I think first, there needs to be an understanding that there are multiple words to describe Métis people. A lot of them, they span languages, right? There are terms in Cree or [inaudible 0:05:38]. There are terms in Anishinaabemowin, or the Ojibwe, or Saulteaux language. There are terms in French as well as terms in English. There are anglicized terms to describe Métis people. Some of them, you might not want to use if you're not a Métis person. Some of them are, as long as you could pronounce it, go for it.
[0:05:57] AH: What's one that would be respectful one for me to use if I'm able to master the pronunciation?
[0:06:03] GP: Some of the more common ones that we see are being called Métis or Michif. Michif is also one of the languages that Métis people speak. Like I said, if there's ways to describe Métis people in Cree or Anishinaabemowin, there's a chance that our communities are also speaking those languages too in certain areas.
The term that I'm partially fond to is wiisaakodewin. Wiisaakodewin means half-burnt woodman or wiisaakodewinini is a half-burnt woodman. It's talking about when wood just starts to burn, it gets that kind of like that tan colour to it before it starts to really turn to ash. It's describing the skin tone of our ancestors who were given that first name. It's also an Anishinaabe version of the French term bois-brûlés, which means burnt wood, which is another term that was kind of imposed upon Métis people.
[0:06:52] AH: Another very early term, yes.
[0:06:54] GP: The other one in Anishinaabemowin that I'm familiar with was [inaudible 0:06:56], which basically means to be half. The Cree terms that I'm familiar with are [inaudible 0:07:02] means to be your own boss or to own yourselves. We can kind of get into why that term was applied later on. The other one was [inaudible 0:07:11], similar to the Anishinaabe [inaudible 0:07:15] mean half. [Inaudible 0:07:16] can either mean half sons or half cousins, depending on how the speaker translates it. Those are some of the terms that I'm familiar with.
[0:07:24] AH: Let's go with the first one.
[0:07:26] GP: Yes. Wiisaa –
[0:07:27] AH: Wiisaa –
[0:07:28] GP: – kodewin.
[0:07:29] AH: Wiisaakodewin.
[0:07:29] GP: Yes, Wiisaakodewin. Then if you're talking about a man specifically, you could say wiisaakodewinini.
[0:07:35] AH: Wiisaakodewinini.
[0:07:37] GP: A woman would be wiisaakodewikwe.
[0:07:39] AH: Wiisaakodewikwe.
[0:07:41] GP: Yes. Then there are plurals. Wiisaakodewininiwag.
[0:07:44] AH: Wiisaakodewin?
[0:07:46] GP: Wag.
[0:07:47] AH: Wag. See, this is why you’ve got to practice these things.
[0:07:53] GP: Yes.
[0:07:53] AH: Wiisaakodewininiwag.
[0:07:54] GP: So as a language learner myself, my son's in immersion right now. So, I'm trying my best to learn the language alongside him, and I'm noticing there are a lot of tongue twisters in the language. Then the plural for the females would be wiisaakodew-. See now, it is happening to me.
[0:08:12] AH: I'm rubbing off on you.
[0:08:13] GP: Yes. Wiisaakodewikweg.
[0:08:16] AH: Wiisaakodewikweg.
[0:08:18] GP: Yes. Wiisaakodewikweg.
[0:08:20] AH: Wiisaakodewikweg.
[0:08:21] GP: Yes.
[0:08:21] AH: Okay. Wiisaakodewikweg. I'm going to practice those, so next time we meet, I'm better at them. Now, those ones I could use respectfully if I were to encounter someone who was Métis, or would I be better off sticking with Métis?
[0:08:34] GP: If someone addressed me as Wiisaakodewin, I would be impressed. I'd be like, how did you know that word? Take that for what it's worth, right? There might be some people who'd be like, "Why are you saying that?"
[0:08:46] AH: No, understood, and it's a very individual thing, I'm sure. The reason we're doing this is what I said, number one, is to say, "Hey, we have to take chances. We have to take on a challenge sometimes like that, even if we're going to sound a little funny." But also because for a long time, renaming people in places was part of, a very part, a very successful part of suppressing Indigenous culture and identity in Canada. I think number one, that's why language preservation is so important. It's wonderful that your son is undergoing that education. But I think it's also incumbent on the rest of us to learn that terminology and understand that it exists and why it matters.
You mentioned your son and his education. I think he said he was learning, if I remember correctly, the Three Fires dialect of Anishinaabe.
[0:09:31] GP: Yes, my son on his mother's side is Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe. He's from Walpole Island, and then he's Métis through his father's line. But he's growing up in his Anishinaabe community, and we're really lucky in that community to have a lot of immersion programming going on and a lot of language preservation. We decided that it would be in his best interest to give him access to the language.
It goes back to something that my father taught me when he said, he always said, “One day, you're going to be a father, and your job is to try and make it better for your child than you had it. That's your responsibility. As long as you can give them something you didn't have, you're doing good." I saw that as my opportunity to give my son something that I didn't have growing up, and that was the language.
Me and my partner, we had that discussion when we saw the opportunity to put him into immersion. We talked about the pros and cons, we looked at studies that were done about fluency, and immersion, and the impacts of immersion on the developing brain. Ultimately, we decided it was in his best interest on multiple levels to be an immersion student.
[0:10:38] AH: Of course, the gift of that comes back to you, as you get to share that journey with him and learn as well, which I know you've said is, you're getting a lot out of yourself.
[0:10:46] GP: Yes. I mean, I've learned to say “blowing bubbles” in the language, which is great, because I've never thought I would be able to say something so unique.
[0:10:55] AH: Yes, no, that's fantastic. Now, as we move on to talk about Métis history, there's one thing that we should clarify. According to Statistics Canada in the 2021 census, almost 135,000 people in Ontario identified as Métis. You're here to speak for all of them, correct?
[0:11:11] GP: Oh, yes, totally. I can really only speak for myself. I shy away from even saying I speak for my community because people back home might not necessarily agree with some of the things I say and that's okay. We're not a homogenous hive mind of people. We are people that have our own thoughts, our own dreams, our own goals. Sometimes those goals are common, sometimes those beliefs are common, but sometimes our politics differ.
[0:11:37] AH: That's right. That's what I remember, you can get five people together who agree on most things, there are still going to be things they don't agree on. Talking to people, understanding people, and respecting individuality is an important part of learning about another culture as well. Now, when the question of who are the Métis people comes up, it often refers back to the name itself, the French verb métissé means to mix races or ethnicities. The noun métis was used as early as the beginning of the 1600s, throughout New France to refer to people who were the offspring of one European and one Indigenous parent. In short, it was simply a racial categorization. Whereas the Métis are a community of people with a shared history and distinct culture. Is that fair?
[0:12:22] GP: That's completely fair, yes. What we see with a lot of the early mixed marriages in New France, and early settlement is that the offspring of those relationships are often absorbed into one side of the community. They're not really becoming a distinct community outside of the other two. They either go with their mother's First Nations community or they go with their father's French community. That's the identity that they wind up adopting. I think it goes to show that identity is more than just genetic. We were kind of talking about that earlier. Identity is more than genetic. Identity is community-based. It's where you live, who you live among, who claims you.
[0:13:04] AH: And it is complicated, and there are different perspectives out there about who is and who isn't Métis. Some people argue that any child of mixed parents from those early days in New France is Métis or was Métis. But it seems that the more prevailing opinion today is that the Métis people grew out of the community and culture of, roughly speaking, the Red River Settlements in Manitoba in the late 1700s. Where do you stand on that?
[0:13:30] GP: Yes, I think it's a really important conversation to talk about the Red River as a central hub of what we would call Métis ethnogenesis, the becoming of a nation. There are some people who believe that you have to have come from the Red River, which I don't 100% disagree with. But the way I look at it is that you have to have been connected to that larger network, not necessarily been from there, but had a connection to there.
Our trade routes connected there, all out of our kinship passed through there, worked there at certain points in time, or spent two or three years working there as carpenters before moving to another community, but we're all part of that collective. I think I'd focus more on identifying it as having a strong connection to the Red River based out of being born out of the Red River. I think there's a difference between the two that needs to be acknowledged.
[0:14:21] AH: It is an important distinction. As you point out, it's not one that automatically answers all the questions, but it does, it does move us in a certain direction. Then when it comes to some of the misconceptions and prejudices about Métis identity, they tend to stem from the origins of the name. For example, the term half-breed, which we've talked about has been an enduring slur used against Métis people at times.
[0:14:45] GP: Half-breed is definitely almost a racially derogatory term, the way it was placed on the half-breed people. But over time, a lot of half-breed people or Métis people, we started to use that term collectively amongst ourselves, call ourselves half-breeds, and there wasn't really shame around it. It was more like a point of pride to be a half-breed. But you know, if someone from outside the community called you a half-breed, there might have been some issues. But among ourselves, the word wasn't common – I mean, the word wasn't uncommon to hear.
[0:15:17] AH: One of the things that stemmed from that, which you still hear even sometimes is the idea that being mixed-race makes Métis people less Indigenous, or even not Indigenous. To a degree that relies on a settler perspective, that identity is primarily based in genetics, as we talked about.
[0:15:33] GP: Like you said, there's a lot of misunderstanding about who Métis people are, because of the subscription to the idea of that, oh, you’re just mixed. That with the narrative of the fur trade, it quickly becomes, "Oh, you must have had some great, great, great, great, great grandma that was Native, and now you think you're Native today,” and I have to tell people, "No, it was, it was my dad, and my grandpa, both his parents and all of their parents kind of thing." Because of what call ethnogenesis, or for non-academic speakers out there, which I'm also not an academic. I just learned the word ethnogenesis from some academic friends. So now I throw it out whenever I want to sound smart.
[0:16:12] AH: And I'm going to steal it too, so I can sound smart too.
[0:16:14] GP: By all means, by all means. Ethnogenesis though, it's like the growth of a nation. The other word is endogamy. That's the other word I was thinking of when I said ethnogenesis. I misspoke. But endogamy is like the act of intermarrying, right? What you see in Métis communities, in distinct communities is the practice of endogamy. Where these Métis families would marry Métis families and their kids would marry kids from other Métis families.
This idea that you have one long-ago Indigenous ancestor is an inaccurate depiction of these families that practiced endogamy. Because we're not a blood quantum-based nation for our citizenship, we go by descendency. There probably are some citizens of ours that have some distant ancestry, but they qualified to come home as citizens and learn about who they are. Then there are others of us who come from multiple family lines of families that stayed in the community and intermarried with one another.
[0:17:09] AH: That sort of more prejudicial perspective on it also ignores the fact that pretty much every cultural group in North America, be they Indigenous, European, or otherwise has undergone a great deal of genetic and cultural mixing. Anyway, this is not exclusive to the Métis nation.
[0:17:23] GP: No, it's definitely not, especially when you look at certain federally recognized Indigenous nations in the States that have control over their own enrolment policies. Some of them are descendency-based. I think about a lot of the ones in Oklahoma, like the Cherokee, and the Choctaw. They have large, large citizenship roles because they're descendency based, but they also have strong cultural preservation. They make sure that their citizens, no matter what their genetic makeup is, have access to learn who they are and have access to carry their culture. I can't remember who said it to me one time, but they said, “If you're going to be a nation, you’ve got to act like a nation.”
I look at what those nations down south are doing, and I'm like, "That's acting like a nation." Taking your citizenship policies into your own hands, and not letting an outside government dictate who your citizens are, and ensuring cultural continuity, regardless of what blood is. Because if we look globally at nations, I could move to Germany in 10 years, I can be a citizen, and I can have a family over there, and my grandkids would see themselves as fully German. Within a generation or two, that is fully acculturated. The idea that someone can't become acculturated to a nation that they have a direct connection to, I think, is kind of silly.
[0:18:39] AH: Good point, I like that. It does open up another area where we talk about identification and what does it mean to be to be Métis? Earlier, I referenced the Stats Can pronunciation that there are almost 135,000 Métis people in Ontario. But that's the number of people who self-identify as Métis. Of those, I think it's just over 36,000 are members of the Métis Nation of Ontario. My question is, is that a significant distinction or is the distinction without a difference in your opinion?
[0:19:07] GP: I think it's an important distinction to note the difference, right? Now, I understand legally speaking, self-identification is a thing. But again, that's something that the government is imposing, is allowing people to claim an identity that's not theirs to bestow, I guess you could say. It's up to the Métis governments to decide who's a citizen. It's not like you can really talk about inequities of dispossession when it comes to not being able to prove you're Métis. If you're not eligible for a Métis citizenship card, it's not because you don't have enough Métis ancestry. Like I said, we're descendency-based. If you can prove a tie to us, you can prove a tie to us.
I think that kind of says how I feel about self-identification. I tried to be kind about it, because I was taught to try and be kind about these things. I’m not trying to hurt anyone's feelings because we're all human at the end of the day. I think a combination of it has to do with people that are relying on family lore. They might have been told they have ancestry, and they think that makes them Métis. Then there are other people who are, they're just misapplying the term Métis. They know they have a distant ancestor and they're going to identify as Métis, despite not being eligible to be a citizen of a Métis government.
[0:20:24] AH: Yes. You’re being kind to people by being careful. But there's reason to be careful because we can find great examples historically in Canada of the imposition of identity and the classifications created by the government, sometimes maliciously, sometimes out of ignorance, and trace now today the incredibly destructive impact of that, of trying to redefine or define for people who they were.
[0:20:48] GP: I'm going to fall back on something that I heard of a Métis lawyer once say. They said that if you're claiming to be from a Métis community, or you're claiming that a Métis community exists, that you have a tie to, there will be historical evidence or historical record of that community existing in some way or another. Whether it was the community identifying themselves or the community being identified by outsiders, which I think are two important signifiers when we're talking about communities, especially with Métis communities. There's a lot of discussion going on about whether some Métis communities are Métis communities, or whether they're just non-status Indians that were enfranchised and lost their status.
I think we need to look at the historical record all across the board and look at how did these people identify themselves, whether it came to census, writings, or records. How did outsiders view them? Were they viewed as a First Nations community? Were they viewed as a non-Indigenous community, or were they viewed as something else? And overwhelmingly, in a lot of instances, we see outsiders referring to our communities as distinct.
There is a description of Penetanguishene, where my family come from, by a man named Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle in 1846 when he came to Canada. He was travelling from east to west. When he got to Penetanguishene, he noted how this was the first place that you'd seen First Nations people living 100% traditionally, dressed traditionally like the old ways that they were told about. But he also wrote a footer under that and said, "Here also, you first see the half-breed, the offspring of the white and red, who has all the bad qualities of both, with very few of the good of either, except in rare instances.”
This was the Scotsman coming from overseas and visibly saw a different community than the First Nations community and a different community than the French settler. I say French settler, because, around the 1840s, there was a lot of influx of French Canadians coming into the Georgian Bay region for logging and such. But he sees a very distinct community there, and he points it out, very insultingly.
[0:22:58] AH: Very insultingly. Not the kindest man that ever travelled from east to west, but you're right, he did recognize the distinct character of the community.
[0:23:07] GP: I also think it's important to note that like, he says, "This is the nearest point." That's him saying that in all these eastern parts that he travelled, he hasn't encountered this yet. He hasn't encountered these people, these other people, this other community of people, which is our community. When it goes to kind of defining the parameters of this distinct people, to me that firmly states that Penetanguishene is the furthest east that it was visibly seen, at least in 1846.
[0:23:36] AH: It's one reinforcement of that sensibility we talked about earlier when we referenced the Red River Settlements. This leads us to some of the big historical topics like the Red River Resistance, Louis Riel, and the fur trade. The parts of Métis history that anyone listening is most likely to know something about. As you and I talked about, we could spend hours talking about each and every one of those.
For the sake of today's conversation, I just want to note for the listeners that we're going to include what's a very cursory version of that history, with the caveat that if you learned about the fur trade, Louis Riel, and Red River in school, you're certainly due for an update.
[0:24:10] GP: I think it's important to make the distinction that my family had moved to Ontario by 1840. We didn't take part in the Red River Resistance or the Northwest Resistance at that point. However, I think it was a very important part of Métis history, especially for the families that lived in the West and the subsequent events that they went through after that, the dispossession, and the reign of terror.
I think a lot of people don't realize that after the troops were sent west, a lot of them didn't leave, and that there's a lot of violence committed against Métis families. Sexualized violence against Métis women, murders, gang beatings. The Métis families that survived the resistance went through a lot. There was a lot of injustice that was done to them. It's not my place to claim that as a part of my story. I have ancestors, I guess you could say relatives of ancestors, that would have been a part of that, but they're not my direct ancestors, right? I think that's an important distinction to make when we're discussing these things. We’re connected to it, but my family wasn't directly afflicted by it.
[0:25:13] AH: I appreciate you sort of acknowledging that and it's important. But I know you also love the history and are passionate about the history. So just cursorily talking about the fair trade, this is very early in the roots of what became Canada and began to expand exponentially with the growth of English power in North America, as they began to exercise that power in inland Indigenous territories. The most well-known example of that being that 1670 charter that gave the Hudson Bay Company title to a massive area known as Rupert's Land, most of which was made up of unseeded Indigenous land.
[0:25:50] GP: Yes. Like I said, or like you said, sorry, the Hudson's Bay Company is kind of at the core of a lot of these issues, right? The transferring of land to Canada afterwards, which again, was done without the consultation or entering into a treaty with any Indigenous peoples, which eventually led to Louie Riel and his Provisional Government standing up, kind of putting their foot down, quite literally when Louis Riel put his foot down on the surveyor's chain in the Red River. It led to a lot of turmoil, I guess you could say, and I think it kind of scared the Canadian government, realizing the mess that they just stepped into. There is of course, like the killing of Thomas Scott, which, right or wrong, was a decision that was made by sovereign people who were living in a territory.
I look at it akin to if I went to another country today and committed a crime, and if I was punished according to that nation's rules for that crime, should the Canadian government go to war with that nation over my crimes? That's the way I look at what happened to those events at West, if that makes sense?
[0:26:58] AH: No, absolutely. That came at a time when things were really accelerating, and there was – the conflict was that continued expansion, as I was saying. Because for a while, the Hudson's Bay Company, while they may have been granted a title, didn't have the ability to exert control over those inland areas and were largely dependent on trading with First Nations and Métis trappers who brought the first to their outpost along the shore of Hudson Bay and James Bay. It was in 1763, when the British took over New France and removed the only competition they had, that it opened the door to more westward expansion. The conflict you're talking about stems directly from yet another land grant in 1811, when the British sold 74 million acres of land to Lord Selkirk, including the majority of Métis territory at that point. Again, no consultation.
[0:27:49] GP: Yes, like you said, the Selkirk coming to the Red River created a lot of tensions, and leading up to the events at the Victory at Frog Plain, which is – a lot of people commonly know that as the Battle of Seven Oaks. Within Métis communities, it's referred to as Frog Plain or the Victory at Frog Plain, which is also, academically and historically, where we start to look at the birth, the final step of the Métis Nation becoming a distinct nation. The Métis people finally identifying themselves when that flag was flown at the battle.
[0:28:22] AH: Ultimately, that conflict continued, but for me, what shaped a lot of what happened afterwards was as much about the transformation of traditional ways of life and traditional economies, as it is about that tug of war back and forth. As the fur trade started to fade, and as the bison on the plains started to disappear, a lot of the traditional way of life of the Métis in the plains, First Nations peoples, began to transform.
[0:28:50]GP: Yes, the fur trade in general, and its constant shifting affected the lives of a lot of Métis people. First, when we look at one point, Sault Ste. Marie was a very large hub of the fur trade. Then after the merger between the Northwest Company and the HBC, they finally find a way to cut that passage, the Great Lakes passage out of the fur trade. It all starts to go through York factory in the James Bay. The hub moves to Red River, and with that, the community in Sault Ste. Marie changes. Some of them go west, they follow the fur trade to its new hub. Some of them stayed in Sault Ste. Marie and they adapt, they adapt to a new way of life that doesn't revolve around the fur trade. A lot of them turned to fishing and guiding.
Subsequently, it's the same thing that happens in Penetanguishene. A lot of our families got involved with fish and experimental farming. I call it experimental because it didn't really work out for a lot of families, which led to a lot of bootlegging fish. Yes, communities definitely change as Canadian expansionism and Canadian colonialism changes the landscape, changes the territories. We see that all across our communities, even today.
[0:30:06] AH: You mentioned farming, and that's an interesting one. Because the government really wanted the Indigenous peoples to turn to agriculture. They saw that as integrating them into the future of the Canadian economy. Now, the challenge with that, number one, was that, very often, Indigenous people were pushed into reservations, which invariably had the worst land for farming. Then, even when Indigenous farmers were successful, very often, there were restrictions imposed either – oftentimes, by virtue of complaints from European farmers who didn't want to have to compete in the marketplace.
[0:30:40] GP: There is a lot of, I guess, you could call it sabotage towards Indigenous successes as the same way I looked at some of the historical documents about Métis fishermen in the Penetang area, who were operating without a license, as we did, basically up until our harvesting rights were recognized in 2003. There were complaints constantly being made. You can see the records of the complaints by non-Indigenous fishermen going to the, I guess, you could say, the game warden, or the ministry, or whatever you would call them in the 1880s and 1890s. Your family members were often doing this just to make ends meet because their farms were so unsuccessful, that this was the thing that they would turn to in the wintertime. They'd go and set nets, and they'd sell some fish to be able to feed their family. It wasn't a commercial venture as much as it was just trying to sustain your family's livelihood.
[0:31:33] AH: Right, very, very subsistence focused. Another interesting area where a lot of Métis communities were successful and productive was in supplying meat and pemmican, which a lot of people may not have heard of before. I only learned about pemmican fairly recently.
[0:31:48] GP: Yes, the pemmican supply trade was a really big part of the Métis economy, especially while the fur trade was still active. The reason was because fur traders travelling out west, the main transport routes were by river and it would be a lot of paddling. We're talking 12 hours a day paddling. Paddle for 12 hours a day, get off the canoe, set up camp, get up in the morning, and repeat the process. This is a very high-calorie type of job. They were really desperate or the fur trade companies were really desperate to find access to a food supply that was portable, non-perishable, and high in protein, which is where pemmican came to the rescue. Pemmican, which is often dried bison meat mixed with Saskatoon berries and tallow or fat to be made into these bars and preserved.
A little-known fact is that pemmican could also be made from fish. Fish pemmican also existed, but was not the main pemmican supply. The main pemmican supply was bison. The bison pemmican market fuelled the need for these large buffalo hunts that the Métis people would go on. They'd gather in large, almost caravans and head out onto the plains in search of the buffalo herds, which coincidentally led to a lot of conflict with other Indigenous nations, more specifically the Dakota competition over hunting grounds created conflict. Conflict was which was eventually settled, but there were some years there were some pretty large conflicts over bison hunting grounds.
[0:33:21] AH: Especially as the display of bison started to drift away.
[0:33:24] GP: Exactly, as the railroad expands across Canada. It's choking across bison migration lines. We all know that settlers were encouraged to kill more buffalo, and often waste the meat, mostly just for the furs or for the tongues. So yes, the dwindling buffalo population pits people that rely on that population against each other because it becomes a finite resource.
[0:33:47] AH: I'm smiling, because I'm going to have to get some pemmican from my brother-in-law, Rich. He listens to our podcast while driving to work in the morning, and he swears by the banana as the ideal transportable food. We're going to transition them over to coffee and pemmican.
[0:34:01] GP: This would be a really good time if there was like a current pemmican company that we had an endorsement from to put in a commercial.
[0:34:08] AH: That's right. We need a commercial for pemmican. If pemmican fails, maybe bananas, I don't know. But again, we talked about the way things the economy was manipulated in terms of farming, but that was true in terms of pemmican as well. As the government became more reliant on the supply of pemmican, they started passing laws that prohibited the export, and essentially trying to monopolize the Indigenous production of pemmican for their own use.
[0:34:32] GP: Yes, exactly. I think that's one of the things that really made a lot of Métis communities sore towards the government, was this outside imposition on Métis trade. You think about the famous Sayer trial, where it was all over the independence of trade. Are Métis people allowed to trade freely or are we basically subjects of the HBC to work for them and only them? I also think it's important to note that the Métis people really forced the courts on that situation because there was a large group of Métis people armed outside waiting to hear the results of that court case. Very luckily, it went the way of the Métis people, because I feel like there'd be a very different historical narrative being told if the trial had gone the other way, and they had to go outside and face an angry Métis mob that wanted free trade. Yes, I think there's definitely an issue with how trade regulations were imposed on Métis people, like you said, in a very controlling manner.
[0:35:31] AH: Well, it's an incredible story of resilience. I'm simplifying it, obviously. But it really is a case of a set of imbalanced rules. Then, when certain people start to excel, even having the scales tipped against them, you change the rules to dip them even further. If people were successful, then they would just change the rules and rebalance the scales in their favour.
[0:35:51] GP: Yes, for sure. The goalposts definitely get shifted a lot. Sometimes it's not even just if you're successful, it's even if you're sustainable. I think about the story at Agawa Bay, just outside Sault Ste. Marie, when a lot of the families from Sault Ste. Marie lost the river lots after the treaty was signed. A large portion of them moved to a place called Agawa Bay, which was a little fishing community, it was a very self-sustainable community. They lived off the land up there, all the way up until about the 1960s or seventies, when the government came and said they wanted to build a park, and they wanted these half-breeds off the land. They said, "No, we're not going to leave our homes. We already did that once. We're not going to do that again." The government just said, "Okay. Well, we're bulldozing and burning your village down.”
[0:36:39] AH: When was that?
[0:36:40] GP: That was around the 1960s or seventies. I know Mitch Case from Sault Ste. Marie has done a lot of work in preserving that story.
[0:36:48] AH: I asked about that date, because it's one of the important things to remember when we talk about these, this unfair treatment. We're not talking about the 1800s or hundreds of years ago. We're talking about things that ran through up until very recently. You used the date 2003 earlier. These are things that – some are unresolved, and some that have been resolved have really only been resolved in the recent past and within our lifetime. That's something that's important to remember.
Central to a lot of that, we talked about changing economies. We talked about the different role, and the growing imbalance of power between what it wants at one point, been something of a partnership to a much more paternalistic relationship. Central to that, of course, in Canada was the Indian Act, which set government policy for relations with Indigenous people during that time. It focused on First Nations, so the Métis were largely outside of the jurisdiction of the Department of Indian Affairs, which meant the government didn't take any responsibility for providing for the nation. Although certainly, as we've talked about, we're still putting restrictions in place.
[0:37:50] GP: Yes, it's really interesting when we look at what happened in the Northwest Indigenous title. The government felt as though they were extinguishing it through the scrip system. If we historically look at what happened with the scrip system, it was rife with fraud, meaning families getting ripped off for what they were duly owed.
Something that was supposed to be used to give Métis people a certain advantage didn't work out. It absolutely left a lot of Métis families in worse positions than they were in before, which led to a lot of – not a lot, but a portion of Métis families seeking to enter the treaty, and some were successful. There are some, today, First Nations people who have Métis ancestors because they made their way onto banned lists. There are some people whose First Nations ancestors left the treaty to take Métis scrip.
There are a lot of blurred lines when it comes to that identity, kind of like we were talking about before, it's not entirely genetic. Sometimes it's political, and sometimes it's based off of who you were around and who you lived with. The exclusion from the Indian Act has always been an interesting one to me when you look at the history of how sometimes, depending on the location, Métis people were able to move in and out of the Indian Act in ways that other First Nations people couldn't when you look at how restrictive the Indian Act was. I think it's interesting because we would look at it now, and look at like, why would you want to move into something so oppressive? Because the Indian Act was a very oppressive act, but still is in many circumstances.
I asked myself like, well, what would the ulterior condition be to have someone look at the Indian Act provisions and say, "Well, that's going to help me more than this will." I think that's a way we could sum up scrip, is that it was just as damaging as the Indian Act back then. These people are still all very visibly Indigenous, but they don't have a community necessarily that's protected to live in. They have to navigate this non-Indigenous world with the discrimination of being visibly Indigenous. So now you're looking at lack of access to work, those types of discriminatory policies. All while not being able to look to the government for any sort of help. So it puts them in an equally bad position as their First Nations kin, in my opinion.
[0:40:10] AH: That's one of those things that continues even today when you talk about what should be done with the Indian Act. Because as problematic as it was, as destructive as it was, it does contain some of the only recognition of responsibility. Whomever that responsibility has been left up to is a separate issue.
[0:40:25] GP: Yes. I think that's a good interpretation of it. As someone who's not under the Indian Act, I'm really careful about how I speak about it because it's not my place. But I do agree with you. I think those are some major concerns, is that doing away with it entirely removes some of the very few protections for land that there are, right? If we remove the Indian Act, we remove the protection of reserve lands. I don't know what that means. I'm not an expert, but I do think that First Nations need to be leading those conversations on how the Indian Act is changed and how it's amended, or how it's completely abolished. I think it needs to be led by First Nations and not led by governing bodies or government institutions.
[0:41:11] AH: Now, one area that relates to this, obviously, today, there's a growing awareness of the history and intergenerational impact of residential schools. Some people assume that one benefit of not falling under the umbrella of the Indian Act is that Métis children were not sent to residential schools. But in fact, they often were, as a means of – sometimes, simply trying to meet enrolment quotas to ensure funding.
[0:41:35] GP: Yes, it's a real issue, right? Residential schools, Métis people weren't entirely able to avoid that legacy, which is unfortunate. It's a painful part of a lot of Métis people's family histories. Then there are other families that were lucky and they weren't necessarily close enough to a residential school to have been sent to one or their community wasn't targeted. Then there are other communities that have – they are in this really tough area where a residential school operated in their community, but it wasn't federally funded. The descendants and survivors of that school are unable to get the reparations or compensation that's owed to them because the government refuses to take responsibility for it.
One instance that I'm thinking of specifically is Île-à-la-Crosse in Saskatchewan, where there was a residential school. But it was entirely operated by the church, and funded by the church. The federal government can kind of wipe their hands of it and say, "Well, that wasn't us so we don't owe you any compensation to your survivors." The survivors that survived that school, they survived the same atrocities that survivors of every other residential school went through, but they're left out. Then there are other schools that just haven't been identified.
There was a report that by the Métis National Council to identify day schools and residential schools that Métis people would have attended. There are some on the lists that the names are familiar. There's one that's listed on the list from back home, would have been a school that my family would have gone to. I don't know enough about the school, and I don't know enough about the history of that school, because it's something that was never really talked about. But there are those reports that are being done, and I guess you could say, investigations into the schools that are ongoing. But I don't want that to detract from the reality of the residential school experience of First Nations and Métis people that went through something that was undeniably heinous. But like you said, the Indian Act or not being under the Indian Act, didn't protect Métis families from being put into residential schools for whatever reason they might have been.
[0:43:38] AH: As you say, ongoing investigations, it's scary to think, but I think we're still early in the process of understanding the true scope of that part of our history, that really terrible, ugly part of our history. And understanding that but also acknowledging that it was a logical extension of government policies that stemmed from the Indian Act, and the entire approach that we as a budding country took toward those relationships. It's a sombre note.
Let's talk about something a little bit sunnier, which is, here we are, we've talked about the origins of the Métis nation and Native communities. Some people were surprised to find that there is a Métis community here, right here in Niagara.
[0:44:18] GP: Yes. Well, I mean, I'm cautious to say community, but no, I guess you could call it – yes, you could call it a community. It's a contemporary community of people, the same way that a large group of Inuit people move to Ottawa. There's technically an Inuit community in Ottawa. But by no means what I consider Niagara a traditional Métis territory or a historic Métis location, right? Our families that are here, moved here. We came from Métis communities, and we came from Métis territories to work, to chase work. A lot of what our families followed was industry. A lot of it has to do with the canals, the automotive industry, the steel industry.
Originally, what brought my dad down here was that he worked on the ships. He started working on the ships. When I was born, so they were staying down here, my mom with my dad. They were staying down here because it was an easy spot to get off the ships. That boat takes a whole day to get through the canal. It'd be easy for my dad to get off and visit my pregnant mother. Then I was born, and he took one look at me, and he says. "I'm done. I'm not doing this no more." He made the decision to quit a pretty good-paying job to be a present father in his child's life, which I thought was amazing.
When I look at or when I understand a lot of the things that my father had been through, there's not a lot of good history in his childhood growing up, a lot of traumas to unpack. But the way that my dad was able to kind of put that all aside for the betterment of trying to raise a son in a healthy way, he quit and he said he was going to find work down here doing something else. Eventually wound up working as a mill rate in Welland, where there is a lot of other Indigenous people that worked in those factories. It's not an uncommon story for Indigenous people to have to leave their community in search of work.
[0:46:15] AH: Well, it's a continuation of what we're talking about as the changing economies and the dissolution of traditional economies. That drive that I think everyone can relate to that – you referenced your father earlier. But his goal was to offer you something better than what he had, and how that's your goal. I think that's something we can all relate to.
[0:46:34] GP: No, I think that a great point. Like you said, like the changing economies, right? Like I said earlier, a lot of our families were part of that fishing, and boating economy, which started to dry up. There's one family back in the bay that still do commercial fishing. All the rest of the commercial licenses are held by the government now. That effectively changed one of the ways that our community took care of themselves. Yes, like you said, when that happens, you have to go elsewhere, you have to find ways to survive. My dad coming down here was his way of trying to provide like you said, a better life for me. But it was also like I said earlier, really lucky to have him, take me back home, and make sure I knew where home was. I’m lucky to have had that, because I know some of our community members, they don't have that, they grow up away from home. They don't come back home, they never get that opportunity.
[0:47:22] AH: And you still have that today, and you're offering it to your son, which is incredible. Can you tell us a little bit about – you said it’s Walpole Island where your family spends time in [inaudible 0:47:32].
[0:47:33] GP: Yes. That's where my partner is from is Walpole Island. I'm really set on raising my son in his territory. He understands home, he has an understanding of his community, but also taking him up to Penetang when the time is – when he's a little bigger, and he can come spearing with me for some pickerel. I think it's important that he knows where he came from, which I've given a better sense of where he's going. It's my way of giving him what my dad didn't give me, and there were valid reasons. It's not like my dad withheld growing up back home for me. This is what he thought was best. Because at the time, it was probably what was best. But in a generation, things can change. Now, I think it's best for our people to be in our communities, in our home territories. For my son, that means on the island in his community with cousins on every corner.
[0:48:24] AH: I think that's a great way to end and you've talked about something that really is the whole purpose of this podcast, which is to look backwards, see where we've come from, so we can make better decisions about moving forward. That's why we do this. I think with this discussion today, we've covered a lot, and we've learned a lot, and I think we've accomplished that purpose. Thank you, I appreciate that.
[0:48:45] GP: Awesome. Well, I'm glad we could have a great conversation. It was a great time getting to visit the Homestead here. It's absolutely beautiful. I think if anyone's ever coming down to the Niagara Region, they should come and stop in here. It's amazing. The vibe here is really good.
[0:48:57] AH: We hear that often. My wife has a great term for it. She says she feels like the house is happy that we're here. This is a historic space and a historic space that even predates the construction of this house. We learn new things every day about this cultural landscape around us. To everyone listening, remember that when it comes to truth and reconciliation, there's a reason that truth comes first. Going back to something we discussed earlier, if you learned about the fair-trade Louis Riel, and the Red River Resistance, or about Indigenous history in general in school, it's time to seek out a more complete and honest history as beneficiaries of a standard of living that's made possible by the friendship of and the continuing alliances with many Indigenous peoples. It's not just their opportunity, it's our responsibility.
So we're going to post a few learning resources on our webpage, on the webpage for this episode. Is there anything you would recommend we include there, Graham?
[0:49:49] GP: I think for people that like reading historical documents about identity, like that quote that I talked about earlier about the half-breeds of Penetanguishene, the worst of both. It was a relative of mine named Dylan Miner that found that. He has an Instagram page called Halfbreed Histories, where he posts a lot of historical documents and instances about the communities in the Northern Western Great Lakes. From Penetanguishene to Sault Ste, Marie to Thunder Bay, Lake of the Woods area shares a lot of the historical documents about those areas that he finds.
If you're into looking at the historical record of our existence, I guess you could say, that's a really interesting Instagram page to check out. I’ve got to plug Mitch Case. If you like looking at good beadwork, Mitch Case from Sault Ste. Marie does really good beadwork. If you're ever looking to get something made for yourself or a gift for a family member, if he's open to doing orders, if he's free, he's one of the best around. One of my favourite artists.
[0:50:54] AH: Great, another good one. We'll post that up on the site for people to look at. Definitely, as I said, we encourage you to reach out and learn more. There are a lot of resources out there. On a personal note, I would say. most importantly, talk to people. Don't be afraid to look dumb. I do it all the time. Look around. I promise you there's an Indigenous community near you, so reach out, attend an event, take a class, or volunteer. Books and websites are no replacement for connecting and engaging with real people, which makes the time you've shared with us today so important, Graham. So thank you so much.
[0:51:25] GP: Thanks so much for having me. It's been great spending time with you today.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:51:30] ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening. Subscribe today, so you won't miss our next episode when we observe the anniversary of the Battle of Lundy's Lane. We'll be talking about what it was like to practice medicine during the War of 1812. To learn more, or to share your thoughts, and show ideas, visit us at thebrownhomestead.ca on social media, or if you still like to do things the old-fashioned way, you can even email us at opendoor@thebrownhomestead.ca.
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