The blue and white flew once again in St. Albert this week as the city celebrated the start of MĂ©tis Week.
Sir George Simpson students joined Mayor Nolan Crouse and former senator Thelma Chalifoux Tuesday at St. Albert Place for the proclamation of MĂ©tis Week. The annual event celebrates MĂ©tis culture and history in Alberta.
This year’s celebration will be smaller than previous ones, said Sharon Morin, head of aboriginal programs at the MusĂ©e HĂ©ritage Museum, as the Michif Institute — one of its main players — is swamped with other events.
But it will still feature the blue-and-white flag of the MĂ©tis, she noted, a flag that has symbolized her people’s history for hundreds of years. “It reminds us of where we came from and who we came from.”
The MĂ©tis flag is the oldest Canadian patriotic flag indigenous to Canada, according to the Gabriel Dumont Institute, and was first flown by MĂ©tis resistance fighters in 1816. It features a white infinity symbol on a blue or red background.
A Manitoba-born MĂ©tis named Cuthbert Grant popularized the infinity symbol in the late 1700s as a way to represent the MĂ©tis, Morin said. It’s meant to symbolize two cultures — aboriginal and European — merging together to create a new, eternal MĂ©tis nation. MĂ©tis who worked for the North West Fur Trade Company usually flew the blue version; Hudson’s Bay employees used the red one.
You can see that mix of cultures in MĂ©tis song and dance. Lyle Donald, director of the Edmonton MĂ©tis Cultural Dance Society, has organized a fiddle and dance competition called MĂ©tis Fest at the Sands Hotel this Friday and Saturday as part of MĂ©tis Week.
Take the sash dance, for example. “It’s a dance that’s very special to us,” Donald said, “since we almost lost it.” The dance itself is based on the Scottish sword dance. Instead of two swords, participants dance around two crossed MĂ©tis sashes in a circle to the beat of a fiddle. The dance had almost faded into obscurity until Alberta dance troupes revived it about 15 years ago.
MĂ©tis Week also marks the 125th anniversary of the death of Louis Riel, a legendary MĂ©tis politician executed for his role in what some historians call the North-West Rebellion.
Riel was a leading advocate for MĂ©tis rights in the 1800s and was executed on Nov. 16, 1885.
It’s a bit weird to celebrate someone’s execution, Morin said, so she prefers to think of this week as a celebration of the rights he struggled to win.
The MĂ©tis were not always celebrated in Canada, Morin noted. They were landless prior to the 1930s, forced to live on road allowances and often shunned by aboriginals and non-aboriginals alike. “I was never white enough and I was never dark enough,” said Morin, who, while MĂ©tis, has blue eyes and blonde hair. She still gets people who question her MĂ©tis identity to this day.
MĂ©tis rights have improved considerably since she was young, Morin said. Unlike Australians and Americans, Canadians can now legally declare themselves to be MĂ©tis and in Alberta live on their own settlements.
St. Albert is rich in MĂ©tis history, Donald added. His grandfather, Charlie Belmont, used to live by the trestle bridge over the Sturgeon River and was one of the founders of the Rainmaker Rodeo. The MĂ©tis Nation of Alberta has also been very active in the city and held a general assembly in the Arden Theatre and Ducky Dome in 1992.
This is Canadian history, Morin said, and it’s important to teach it to our children. “It’s how Canada was built.”
For details on MĂ©tis Fest, call Donald at 780-910-3625.
