Who Are The Metis?

Our relationship with the land defines us.

As I sit and think about what it means to be Metis, and how our culture has grown in time and space, the words of one of my ketehayah linger not far back in my mind…”The land is everything”.

There was a time I didn’t fully understand the extent of this comment. But I was a very young person and it sounded pretty. As I have grown in my connection to culture, I have begun to understand this statement more fully. Everything about our culture, our foods, our clothing, our arts, our stories, our traditions, our languages and our ceremonies…comes from this land where our nation was birthed and has grown. 

This land, the home or mother land where we understand ourselves to be from, is the source of all we have. Our language doesn’t make sense if you root it up and place it somewhere else. The depth of connection it embodies becomes more flat and one dimensional. The words we have used to describe those being around us for generations are out of place. And, we lack words with a connection to our past and stories for the things around us. We can’t simply pick up our culture and put it somehwere else. 

Like language, our foods and the relationship with the land they require become impossible to connect with if we take those traditions and place them in some far off place. They would whisper to us of home…but it would be a faint calling…not a rooting to that place. 

Most importantly, hand in hand with language, our ceremonies are from this place. If we go to the tropics of the southern tip of Menistik, our ceremonies may have similarities there. There will be threads of familiarity. But, the land is different there, and thus so are the ceremonies that connect those peoples, in that place, to that land.

It’s important to understand, Indigenous peoples of Menitisk are not all the same, equivalent, or interchangeable. We have different stories, histories, and traditions. All beautiful in those differences. 

The nation I belong to is called in the modern times “Metis”. I honestly don’t like this term. It gives rise to confusion. Becuase, the term itself means “mixed”. This word was used to describe our nations at it’s ethnogenesis….its birth. A culture born of mixing two very different cultural worldviews. The parents of whom formed a bond at a time and place through ongoing relationship, shared values, and expedience. However, after that birth, there were growing pains, initiations, hard years, glorious years, and a shared culture that developed amongst those people who had gathered….in a place, at a specific time, and became bound together through shared experience. It is the Metis Nation, who call ourselves Michif and Otipemisiwak, that I come from. We come from the very western tips of of the woodlands as it meets the prairies and stretches across the plains to the West to the very edges of the Rocky Mountains. We extend to the North and South, but our homeland has historical geographical limits. We are not from “everywhere”, we are from here. It’s true, some groups did break off from our main home lands and made a home outside of these spaces. They often did this as a result of persecution, violence and the ever marching progression of colonization. Many groups went to the Far North. Many planted themselves on the southern edge of our homeland in Montana, and North Dakota. I have many family members in these places. However, we continue to understand as a nation, that having groups move to places during those hard times…doesn’t make those places our homeland. 

And this is where there can be some hard understandings to wrestle with. Our nation’s modern families trace our roots, our kinship connections, and our histories to our homelands. However, there are other people who also use the term metis to describe themselves. However, the cultural “parents” of those peoples are different, as is the land from which they have grown. 

I can’t argue that the term “metis” meaning mixed would have also applied to them at a point in time. But what I can say, is that our histories, families, and culture, are different…because we are from very different places.

As Indigenous people, we don’t believe in “converting” others. There is no supremacy of beleifs. Rather, there is the acknowledgement that we should follow what we are taught by the culture we belong to, which is the natural outgrowth of the place we are from. And so, all Indigenous cultures are beautiful, hold truth, and importants….though we are definitely not all the same, equivalent, or exchangeable. 

Why do I share these thoughts? Because when I offer, what I am able to, to those who come to our programs, I am doing so as Otipemisiwak Iskwew, or as a Famme Michif. A Metis Woman….from the Plains of my homeland, with the histories of our families from across the homeland. As beautiful as other cultures of mixed Indigenous peoples from other lands might be….I can’t share anything from that source. I am not connected to it. 

When I say this, I am not suggesting other mixed cultures aren’t valuable, beautiful and important…only that they are different from the one I belong to. I offer intense encouragement to those from these other cultures, regardless of the words you use to describe yourselves, celebrate your cultures. Share it with eachother. Create spaces for sharing your stories. Gather and feast together on the foods from your lands. Connect with the ceremonies from the parent cultures from which you come. 

I sincerely with all those who have been disconnected can reconnect, find their roots, reclaim their traditions, and in turn, to be claimed back. 

And now the harder part. I can’t offer those things to you. Because I don’t have those things. I can only offer a point from which to begin to learn…for people with whom I share culture and kinship. And even that, as much as it might seem when we are starving for our culture, is so so so little. Its a hint at that connection I have been blessed to grow within. But, like all of us who wish to connect deeply with culture, who start out at a point, sometimes through arts, sometimes through foods, sometimes through people, the next steps are critical. And that is to connect with ketehayak. You NEED those old ones who carry the culture. 

These programs are a simple and humble starting point for some who feel called to conenct in this way. And, I’ve seen it so so so many times with those who leave these programs….they go on to connect more deeply, with “elders” (we use the term ketehayak for those who have Nehiyaw roots). And I have also seen it constantly…the confidence of connection grows greatly. 

We are Metis. Otipemisiwak. Michif. We have a history, a beautiful culture, cereomines, arts, language, foods….we have kinship. Although these programs are for those who share this very specific identity, if you are from outside our kinship systems, I invite you to learn through art classes, many of which you can access here. Beading and other arts are a beautiful way to begin to reconnect. I encourage you to connect with the nations around you, the elders in your area, I wish I knew who they were so I could help you find them. I know sincere searches take time. Mine is ongoing and has taken decades. Aahkamayimoh. Keep going. You’ll get there. 

Walking Foward Now

Starting in our next cohort (Jan 2023), we will be inviting those who would like to join our programs to share what they know of their connection to the Metis Nation (as I have described above) in the names of family who they know, where they are from, and their connection to our kinship systems. 

This is an important process, these introductions, and it is a foundational aspect of our experience every month in the programs we offer. So, this will serve as the starting point for that. 

What about those who are 60’s Scoop Survivors?

We invite you to share what you know of your connection to the Metis Nation or our Kinship systems (we also open these programs to Nehiyaw and Anishinaabe as they are our cousins). It is a hard process to reconnect in these circumstances, and we are not going to turn you away. But we also invite you to share why it seems to be the right step to connect with these programs.