Métis musician takes unfiltered history to Toronto schools
Malone Mullin | CBC News | Posted: July 2, 2017 9:00 AM | Last Updated: July 2, 2017
From canoes to residential schools, these Toronto students get a glimpse of Métis life beyond the fur trade
At St. Bernard elementary school in Toronto's north end, students play, joke and get restless like any other kids.
But they also sing about Louis Riel, paddlers' woes and the legacy of residential schools in the Métis language Michif. And they learned it all, according to their principal, without even noticing.
Students in the fifth and sixth grades worked alongside Conlin Delbaere-Sawchuk, who represents one-quarter of Toronto's Métis Fiddler Quartet. He's been dropping into classrooms across the GTA since April with a mission to bring his language, history and culture directly to young people.
"I want them to be able to relate to the Indigenous experience," he explained.
And relate they do. On a muggy Thursday afternoon in late June, a gymnasium's worth of kids sang along to Delbaere-Sawchuk's musical storytelling, even swaying to "Rame, Rame," a voyageur song used by traders to keep time while rowing.
Delbaere-Sawchuk fills the gaps between songs with history lessons, describing an attack, centuries ago, on the Hudson's Bay Company. "These were buffalo hunters," he said to a quickening tempo. "They knew how to ride and shoot on horseback."
Despite the playful atmosphere, Delbaere-Sawchuk's mission included a frank discussion of residential schools, something he says cannot be separated from any meaningful education about Métis history.
Asrat Manase, one of Delbaere-Sawchuk's young students, speaks openly about children ripped from their families. That abuse was a largely overlooked aspect of Canadian history back when the adults in the room were her age, but Manase, not yet in high school, now knows exactly what happened.
"First Nations people were forced to go to these schools, and learn about a different religion," she said, "instead of the religion already known to them."
"There's a lot of hardship in Indigenous communities," Delbaere-Sawchuk said, explaining his reasons for the project.
"It's a very compound problem. It's not going to be solved with any single solution." But in order to find any solutions at all, he adds, "we need young people to learn about the conditions Indigenous people live in."
The students at St. Bernard absorb these lessons by writing lyrics, molding melodies and, in the case of one class, choreographing a beat-boxing performance about a doomed beaver.
"The Métis trap it, right by the stream. He raises up his rifle, the beaver let out a scream," the lyrics go, rapped by a student on stage. "The beaver lost his coat. He'll never get it back. He's been made into felt and turned into a hat."
Kiara Harry, a sixth grader who helped pen a meditative ballad about a river traveller, pulls out her handwritten lyrics, pointing to the lines she crafted herself with a shy smile.
On stage, young musicians eagerly clacked wooden spoons to upbeat battle hymns.
Their Métis-inspired music can educate others, Harry says. "If they actually listen to our songs, they will learn," she said. "Faster than they learn from books."
Delbaere-Sawchuk agrees. Music has the power to teach, he says, and that's why he's dedicated much of his time — 15 years, to be exact — to the quartet.
He and his siblings will soon perform for more young people at the North American Indigenous Games in two weeks. He sees it as yet another chance to make connections vital to reconciling past injustices.
"The most important part of this is to tell the truth," he said. "Without that we cannot begin to move forward."