DC Public Library System

The North-West is our mother, the story of Louis Riel's people, the Métis Nation, Jean Teillet

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 519-536) and index

illustrationsmapsportraits

index present

non fiction

The North-West is our mother

bibliography

1113929870

Jean Teillet

the story of Louis Riel's people, the Métis Nation

There is a missing chapter in the narrative of Canada's Indigenous peoples-- the story of the Métis Nation, a new Indigenous people descended from both First Nations and Europeans. Their story begins in the last decade of the eighteenth century in the Canadian North-West. Within twenty years the Métis proclaimed themselves a nation and won their first battle. Within forty years they were famous throughout North America for their military skills, their nomadic life and their buffalo hunts. The Métis Nation didn't just drift slowly into the Canadian consciousness in the early 1800s; it burst onto the scene fully formed. The Métis were flamboyant, defiant, loud and definitely not noble savages. They were nomads with a very different way of being in the world-- always on the move, very much in the moment, passionate and fierce. They were romantics and visionaries with big dreams. They battled continuously-- for recognition, for their lands and for their rights and freedoms. In 1870 and 1885, led by the iconic Louis Riel, they fought back when Canada took their lands. These acts of resistance became defining moments in Canadian history, with implications that reverberate to this day: Western alienation, Indigenous rights and the French/English divide. After being defeated at the Battle of Batoche in 1885, the Métis lived in hiding for twenty years. But early in the twentieth century, they determined to hide no more and began a long, successful fight back into the Canadian consciousness. The Métis people are now recognized in Canada as a distinct Indigenous nation. Written by the great-grandniece of Louis Riel, this popular and engaging history of "forgotten people" tells the story up to the present era of national reconciliation with Indigenous peoples

Part One: The Birth of the Nation. The Old Wolves -- The Voyageurs -- The Mothers of the Métis Nation -- Going Free -- The First National Resistance -- Victory at the Frog Plain -- Part Two: Making the Nation. After the Merger