Everyone seems to want to follow territorial borders drawn by White people to establish their associations.
Everyone wants to see big and get together by country or by province or by administrative region.
Yet, for any community to be considered a “historic rights bearing community”, it must be proven that a number of people with mixed Indian and European or Inuit and European ancestry
✔ formed a group with a distinctive collective identity;
✔would live together in the same region and
✔ shared a common way of life.In trying to see too big, we miss these essential criteria.
In trying to see too big, we are missing these essential criteria.
Meanwhile, our communities are suffering in the same way we lost our town stores for the benefit of some super mall in a big town.
The government can no longer deny the existence of our historic communities; it will turn its focus on whether or not these communities still exist in the contemporary world.
I wish 2019 is for us a call to strengthen our communities, for Metis to return to our Indigenous ways of sharing and helping our family, our neighbors and our communities.
As La Grenouillière and Batoche have shown us, when we defend our communities, our traditions and our culture, we are a force to be reckoned with.
Happy, Healthy New Year to all. I look forward to hearing about your community’s successes in 2019.