BradfordToday and InnisfilToday welcome letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is in response to the article ''Pretendians, cultural appropriation' focus of upcoming panel' published March 19.
I am writing in response to MNO member and chief strategy officer Jen St. Germain's remarks in the article.
I must assert that she is misleading in her claims regarding the MNO’s six "new historical Métis communities." While it is true that all the claimed regions have been thoroughly researched by accredited historians, both Métis and Canadian, there is a significant contradiction.
Contrary to the historians cited by the MNO, those who are not MNO members — a point of concern, as MNO historians are affiliated with the organization — conclude that the MNO is mistaken in its historical assertions.
Furthermore, the MNO has yet to present its long-promised independent research study to substantiate its claims related to Canadian and First Nation territories within Ontario. In fact, very recently, the new president of the hamstrung Métis National Council (MNC) announced it was unlikely that MNO-provided panel study would ever be released.
Regardless, there have been at least three independent research reports published since 2020, provided by sister affiliates of the former MNC.
The latest came out in August 2024 via the Metis Nation Saskatchewan (MNS), a former MNO partner who’d sided with the MNO to reinstate the organization as a practising affiliate after they’d been suspended from the MNC in 2020 for not adhering to the Métis Nation’s own ratified identity and citizenship parameters. The identity ratification took place in 2002/2003 and was affirmed by all the MNC affiliates, including the MNO.
The MNO moved to create their own idea of a Métis identity, which they now call, “Ontario Métis.”
It's not surprising that the MNO will continue to push their claims as far as they can, as they’ve been quite successful in attaining federal and provincial funding for their ventures, which includes very healthy paycheques for those who follow along.
There are several million dollars in funding at stake for the MNO, as well as lives fully created around an identity that wasn’t theirs to claim in the first place.
The fact that the First Nations they continue to claim to descend from are equally vociferous in decrying those claims seems to be only a mild annoyance for the MNO. Whatever governmental and corporate partnerships they’ve created seem to be supportive of them regardless of how absurd the larger picture coming into focus becomes.
This is what's behind the Bill C-53 cancellation, which was meant to move the MNO, MNA & MNS into self-governing positions. To date, only the Manitoba Métis Federation has attained full government status and recognition as the national government of the Red River Métis by Canada and First Nations.
There’s another small point that has come up recently that I’ve asked even Jen St. Germain directly to show me. Where in all their claims of "historical Métis activity" in those southern Ontario regions, are the historical photos?
Where are all the depictions in black and white of communities said to have existed at the same time all the photos of Métis history were being taken on the prairies?
Where are the historical maps? These are all available in abundance in the legitimate Métis homeland across the prairies. Yet, there is an absolute dearth of anything comparable to those regions in Ontario where Métis claims have been popping up in only the last 15-20 years at the earliest. It's a simple point, but within it lies a huge piece of damning evidence, or rather, lack thereof.
I find it incomprehensible that the lack of evidence on the scale demonstrated by the MNO still enables any organization to intrude into Indigenous communities as the MNO has done. It's time for these appalling and deeply colonialist behaviours to come to an end.
Robyn Lawson
Red River Métis citizen
Vancouver
