The controversial rise of the eastern Metis

It was 1948 when her father told her. He was laying on the chesterfield in the living room of their Yarmouth, N.S., home, his body ravaged by tuberculosis.

“He had consumption and he knew he only had a few months to live,” recalls Mary Lou Parker. “He told me we had Indian blood in us, which made us Metis.”

The 12-year-old felt proud of her Indigenous roots. But she was warned never to reveal her “halfbreed” heritage, as it was then called, for fear of being shunned.

So she kept it secret until years later, in a quest to explore her identity and gain recognition, she formed the Eastern Woodland Metis Nation Nova Scotia, using a term — Metis — usually associated with Western Canada. Her group has grown exponentially, and now has 30,000 members.

Census data show the number of people who call themselves Metis soared nearly 150 per cent in Quebec and 125 per cent in Nova Scotia from 2006 to 2016, according to Statistics Canada. Dozens of new Metis organizations cropped up over the same period.

But the sudden proliferation of self-reported Metis in Eastern Canada has emerged as a profoundly divisive debate.

Many use identity cards that look much like Indian Status cards. Others have tried to claim Indigenous rights through the courts, fuelling a perception that the Aboriginal newcomers are socalled rights grabbers.

“It’s one thing to say ‘I’m First Nation, this is part of my culture and I want to learn more about it,’” says Cheryl Maloney, a Mi’kmaw activist and Cape Breton University political science professor. “But that’s not what they’re saying. They’re trying to be viewed as Metis under the Constitution, and to have rights and benefits.”

Critics reject outright that there is a distinct Metis identity in the Maritimes and Quebec. They say people of mixed blood in the region either integrated into Indigenous communities or assimilated with European newcomers, unlike the distinct Metis People of Louis Riel in Western Canada.

“When you’re looking at the Maritimes and Quebec, the children of intermarriage were accepted by either party, in our case the Mi’kmaq or the Acadian,” Mi’kmaw elder and historian Daniel Paul says. “There was no such thing as a Metis community here in this region.”

For those who consider themselves eastern Metis, the rejection of their identity is exclusionary and mean-spirited — a continuation of their oppressed status.

They argue a distinct mixedheritage people existed in the region with a shared history and culture. But these mixed-race people were compelled to identify as white for fear of discrimination.

“We were forced to assimilate with white people, our identities stolen,” says Parker, 82, the grand chief of the Eastern Woodland Metis. “Now we’re reclaiming our native heritage.”