Métis woman's journey with Michif language led her from Japan to a rural Manitoba community

Heather Souter has always had a love of languages. When she graduated from the University of British Columbia, she moved to Japan to learn Japanese and worked as an interpreter for 20 years. 

While living in Japan, Souter, who is Métis, did some research on Michif, the Métis language. She realized how endangered her traditional language was and decided to move home and help revitalize it.

But first, she had to learn how to speak it.

"It was really difficult to make connections… In my family I couldn't find anyone, really anyone that spoke any Indigenous language anymore," said Souter. 

Souter was born and raised in Vancouver. Her connection to the Métis nation comes from her dad, Ken Souter, who didn't know the language, but still raised his daughter to be proud of her ancestry. 

When she set out to find people who could teach her Michif, she found out that there was a concentration of people who could speak Michif in Camperville, Man. 

Camperville is a small Métis community just over 400 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

"Some elders in Camperville welcomed me and that's how it all started," said Souter.

In 2003, she travelled with a small team of Métis people interested in learning Michif to take part in the master-apprentice program by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival.

The program connects elders and or fluent language speakers with apprentice language learners one-on-one and gives them the tools and techniques to learn the language.

The program partnered Souter with Métis elder Grace Zoldy of Camperville, and Souter would spend a lot of time in the Manitoba community. So much time that she met her future husband there and eventually moved there permanently.

Building a language community 

When Souter began learning the language in the early 2000s, she estimates there were about 1,000 people who spoke the four different Michif dialects. Today, she guesses that there are between 100 and 200 fluent speakers left.

However, she said there has been a push among young Métis people who are eager to learn and reclaim their language.
These days, she describes herself as a language revitalization activist and advocate.

Souter now uses English, French, Michif and Japanese, and can speak some Anishinaabemowin, Cree, German and Spanish.

She taught a Michif course at the University of Manitoba over the past summer.

"It took over two years to convince the institution that, of the 1,400 Métis students, and 27,000 students on campus, that we could find 25 people to take the course," said Laura Forsythe, who is Métis from Roostertown and the Métis Inclusion co-ordinator at the U of M.

When the university approved the course, Forsythe had a difficult time finding someone fluent enough in the language and also had the capacity to teach the course. Then she found Souter.

"It's absolutely incredible," said Forsythe. "We're reviving a speech community in a place that it was almost erased. We have students on campus daily, meeting each other, and speaking Michif to each other." 

With every passing year, there are fewer fluent Michif speakers. Souter's hope is that her students are not only becoming her language peers but also creating a new community.

"That's what it's all about," said Souter. "We're doing that together and also helping people become basically language revitalizationists."

CBC Indigenous is highlighting a few of the many diverse Indigenous languages that exist across the country. Read more from the Original Voices project.