Métis identity matters |
Winnipeg Free Press
2011-02-09
Editorial
The question of Métis identity has befuddled Canadians, governments and the courts ever since Louis Riel occupied Upper Fort Garry in 1869 and established a provisional government. Just who were these troublemakers, who had their own language, customs and practices, and who now claimed territorial rights?
Well, they weren’t First Nations and they weren’t Europeans, and they weren’t merely “half-breeds,” but a relatively new nation born in the fur-trading culture of 18th-century North America.
That was probably good enough, as definitions go, until 1982 when the Canadian Constitution guaranteed legal rights to aboriginal peoples, including the Métis, but left it to the courts to sort out those rights. Obviously, if they had rights, whatever those rights were, it mattered who and what was a Métis…
Read the entire editorial here.
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