Eastern Métis call rejection of their identity exclusionary, mean-spirited
HALIFAX — 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 Métis.”
The 12-year-old felt proud of her Indigenous roots. But she was warned never to reveal her “half-breed” 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 Métis Nation Nova Scotia, using a term — Métis — 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 Métis 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 Métis organizations cropped up over the same period. But the sudden proliferation of self-reported Métis in Eastern Canada has emerged as a profoundly divisive debate.
“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 Métis under the Constitution, and to have rights and benefits.”
Critics reject outright that there is a distinct Métis 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 Métis 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 Métis community here in this region.”
For those who consider themselves eastern Métis, the rejection of their identity is exclusionary and mean-spirited — a continuation
of their oppressed status. They argue that a distinct mixed-heritage 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 Métis. “Now we’re reclaiming our native heritage.”
Many Mi’kmaq people say Indigenous Peoples suffered enormously from efforts to assimilate them.
“Throughout history we resisted colonization and spoke out about the horrors against Indigenous Peoples,” says Jarvis Googoo, a non-practising lawyer in Halifax and a Mi’kmaw from We’koqma’q First Nation. “Where were these Métis people all this time?”
Yet hiding Indigenous heritage was a matter of survival, says Karole Dumont, chief of the Council of the First Métis People of Canada.
“If you could pass off as white you did,” she says. “Our grandparents and greatgrandparents did whatever they had to do to ensure that none of their kids ended up in residential schools.”
The eastern Métis debate was thrust into the spotlight earlier this year when the East Coast Music Association pulled a Nova Scotia nominee from consideration for an Indigenous artist award.
At issue was the heritage of a Cape Breton guitarist who identifies as Acadian and Métis.
His name was withdrawn from the Indigenous artist of the year category after questions surfaced about his background.
“The Métis people are the only people who have to lay out their pedigree and prove their identity in Canada,” Dumont says.
But Googoo says jobs, education and awards programs geared toward Indigenous Peoples are an important piece of reconciliation. He says having newly identified Métis flood those programs is a step backwards.
“It’s worsening the problem because these organizations think they’re doing their part for reconciliation.”