Lawyer and Riel descendant says Métis history goes beyond Louis Riel
More work to be done until the land promised to the Métis Nation is honoured, Jean Teillet says
A new book by Jean Teillet, a Métis treaty negotiator and lawyer, is filling the gaps of Métis culture and history and the role it plays on the plains and in Canada.
Teillet, whose great grandfather was Joseph Riel, younger brother of Louis, authored The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Métis Nation, published in September.
"It's a bit of a quirk of history in Canada that everybody knows who Louis Riel is. Everybody knows him, and they know nothing about his people. Absolutely nothing," Teillet said Tuesday in Regina.
"They don't know who they are. They don't know where they are. They don't know what they're like — and so the purpose in writing the book was to tell the story of the people."
Teillet spoke at Government House in Regina Tuesday evening about Louis Riel and and the 200 year history of the Métis.
"The Métis Nation is still here." she said.
Teillet also spoke on what it means to be a Métis, or Michif. She said it's not as simple as having mixed heritage or an ancestor from the 1600s — a time before the Métis.
Essentially, if you are to claim the Michif identity, you need to be a descendant of people involved in Métis stories and part of the people from the Red River, who engaged in the resistance of 1869, 1870 or 1885, she said.
She said there must be a connection to the Red River region, which is more than just the immediate Red River area, but a broader land base including North Dakota, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Teillet said the Red River Resistance was started not because Riel wanted to fight, but because he wanted a place for the people to negotiate with Canada their place on the land, language, education and governance.
Instead, John A. Macdonald and George-Etienne Cartier broke promises made to the Métis when white, Anglo-Saxons from Ontario made their way west.
"It has taken us 150 years to restore what Louis Riel tried to do and we haven't finished that yet because 1.4 million acres is still not in the hands of the Métis," she said.