 I'm Rody and I'm Metis. Most of my friends don't know what that means. Here's what I tell them. The Metis people started when a bunch of guys called the Voyagers came here to the prairies to Torx for our trade. Along the way they met the First Nation people who had lived here for thousands of years. They helped the Voyagers in their travels. Sometimes the Voyagers even married some of the First Nation women. Their babies were a mix of both cultures. By the way, do you know where the babies come from? I do. After the little babies grew up they found it hard to fit in. And they weren't exactly like their mom or their dad. And do you know what they called themselves? Metis, which means mixed. These were the founders, the first official generation of the Metis people. The generation of my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents. That's seven generations leading to me. Not all of them were happy to be Metis. Actually, it's kind of in our roller coaster ride. So the founders had babies. These babies grew up to be the proud generation. They grew up really happy to be Metis. Sadly, after many years of fighting for the right, Louis Riel and the Metis were defeated at the Battle of Akash. So many things that worked so hard to build were burned to the ground. That made their babies the defeated generation. They had seen their parents, the proud generation lose the fight. Even though they loved being Metis, they stayed pretty quiet about it. Their babies grew up in a world where being Metis is a really bad thing. They were the shamed generation. Everywhere they went, people said mean things just because they were Metis. Not fair. And that's why the shamed generation raised their babies to hide their Metis heritage. And this hidden generation got very good at hiding. Where are you guys? And guess what? They didn't even tell their babies who they were. Could they? Mom, are you hiding anything from me? These babies are what I call the lost generation. Many of these guys didn't even know they were Metis. But thankfully, to my mom's generation, born as lost, became the found. With them digging an excellent detective work, the found generation found out who we were again. Thanks, mom. For the first time in a long time, many Metis kids are growing up proud to be Metis from day one. I love to play in the snow. Do the jig. Someday my mom will teach me to be. Check out these moxins my mom made me. So what's the lesson here? Knowing who we are and why we're proud of it makes us happy people. Happy people are nice to each other. And when we're nice to each other, only good things can happen. So that's the story of the Metis people. Next time where I'll tell you where babies come from, it's really weird.